


Spirit's Fall

by Batsutousai



Series: The Blood Toll Saga [1]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Blood Drinking, Canon-Typical Violence, Dubious Morality, Edward Elric Swears, Fullmetal Alchemist Fandom Challenge, Gen, Immortality, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Temporary Character Death, Vampire Edward Elric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-11-03
Packaged: 2018-08-28 06:54:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 38,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8435830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Batsutousai/pseuds/Batsutousai
Summary: Born too early, Ed and Al don't manage to find a way to return Al to his body before his soul leaves the armour for good. Ed will do anything to save his brother, including making a deal with the closest thing to the devil he believes in. Can he keep his humanity long enough to save his brother, or are they both doomed to the separate hells that Ed's deal has trapped them within?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Spin](https://archiveofourown.org/works/606139) by [metisket](https://archiveofourown.org/users/metisket/pseuds/metisket). 



> I...really have no good explanation for this foolery, other than that my muse really wanted to write immortal!Ed. (Also, slightly bonkers!Ed, which I 100% blame on [metisket](http://archiveofourown.org/users/metisket/pseuds/metisket)'s [demon alchemist series](http://archiveofourown.org/series/31364).) I went back and forth a bit on what to do with Al – he was never going to be dead, and he isn't in this, I promise – before finally settling on something...weird, I guess. Idk. You'll see.
> 
> Things to know: Hohenheim met Trisha 130-some odd years before canon, so Ed and Al were born in 1789 and 1790, respectively, as opposed to 1899 and 1900, as they were in canon. Their family's dates and Ed _not_ having automail (yet) are pretty much the only things that have changed for the world's set-up. (What will change _because of_ that change, well... XD)
> 
> This is 100% from Ed's PoV. So, you know, you people can once again bitch about not knowing what other characters (Roy) are thinking/feeling/what-the-fuck-ever.
> 
> Dates will be in the scene breaks at the beginning of each scene, save for some special scenes that take place in front of the Gate.
> 
> There will be side stories, of a sort, attached to this series. For this part of the series, there are only two, which I'll mention in the chapters they're attached to, or you can find them on the series page. I do **not** intend to add to that number.
> 
> This part of the series was written for the [FMA Fandom Challenge on tumblr](http://fmafandomchallenge.tumblr.com/about). My most wonderful artist for the FC is [arantxamagnelli](http://arantxamagnelli.tumblr.com/)! You can find their art linked in the chapters, or just check the [tumblr masterpost](http://batshieroglyphics.tumblr.com/post/152808175034)!
> 
>  
> 
> You can also read this at [Fanfiction.Net](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12213601/1/), [tumblr](http://batshieroglyphics.tumblr.com/post/152569581554), or [LiveJournal](http://batsutousai.livejournal.com/370556.html).

["Welcome back, Alchemist," that freakish white figure said, Ed's stolen arm resting on one white knee, while his stolen leg was curled absently off to one side. Taunting him.](http://arantxamagnelli.tumblr.com/post/152576533037/its-time-to-begin-posting-heres-my-first-fanart)

He didn't have time for taunts. 

"My brother," he whispered, _pleaded_ , because Al–

_A gasp, not quite Ed's name, and an armoured hand reaching for him, before the armour fell to the ground with a clatter, and Ed screamed and screamed, but Al–_

_Al didn't come back, that time._

The white figure stared at him – or, Ed _assumed_ it was staring; it was hard to tell with something that didn't have a face – for a long moment, before holding up two hands – Ed's own and one white absence – in a sort of 'what can you do' gesture. "He ran out of time." 

" _NO!_ " Ed shouted, reached out too far with his left hand, and almost overbalanced when he dropped his crutch. He forced himself to straighten, wincing when the peg dug into the stump of his left leg, reminding him that he still needed to replace the cup that was supposed to help distribute the pressure. 

"He ran out of time," the white figure repeated, heartless. Merciless. "That's the rule." 

"Since _when_?!" Ed snarled, catching his fist in the tattered edge of his shirt, to keep from waving it at the white figure and unbalancing himself again. "I don't remember that rule!" 

The white figure moved its hands in that 'what can you do' gesture again, and replied, "It's not my job to tell you the rules, Alchemist." 

"You _monster_!" Ed shouted, couldn't stop himself from starting forward, half thinking to just punch the figure in its face, because what did it fucking _matter_ what punishments it had in store for him? Al was _dead_.

Without his crutch to help him keep his balance, when his peg leg slipped against the white non-ground, Ed toppled over to the side, gritting his teeth against a shout of pain when the impact jostled the poorly bandaged cut on his side. 

"Pitiful," the white figure said, and Ed glared up to find it standing over him. 

"Come down here and say that to my face, you–"

"I will make you a deal, Alchemist," it said, interrupting him. 

Ed choked on his insult, narrowed his eyes and shoved himself into a sitting position, so he didn't have to look up quite so far to glare distrustfully at the blank white face. "You don't make _deals_ ," he returned flatly, because the figure had always ever made its 'trades' without warning, taking whatever it pleased and then standing back and _grinning_ , so wide and cruel, at the outcome. 

A wide, knowing smile split the empty face, and the hair on the back of Ed's neck stood straight on end. "I'm making an exception. Don't you want to hear my deal, Alchemist? You can save your brother." 

Ed clenched his hand into a fist, felt his heart skip a beat, before speeding up; **Al**. Was there anything he _wouldn't_ do to have his brother back? 

He licked his lips, tried to ignore the queasy roll of his stomach at the mere idea of making a _deal_ with the figure, and nodded. "I'm listening." 

It crouched in front of him, putting them more on level, and Ed stared into the white emptiness where eyes should have been. "Your father's dead," it said, completely unconcerned for the way Ed's breath caught. 

His useless father was _dead_? Was that why he'd never come home? Had Ed...hated him for...nothing? 

"He left things unfinished, things that are now left to _you_ , Alchemist, as the last of his blood." 

Ed swallowed down emotions he couldn't deal with and shook his head. "What things?" 

It _smiled_ , wide and cruel in a way that made Ed want to scurry backwards, even though he already knew how difficult that was with only two good limbs, and that showing fear was... He couldn't. He _wouldn't_.

"You can't expect me to hand you _all_ the answers. If you solve this for us, I'll return your brother to you, body and soul, exactly as he is now." It motioned behind Ed. 

Every one of his instincts told him turning his back on the white figure was a terrible idea, but he couldn't keep from twisting, catching his weight on his hand and wincing at the burn of his side as he looked over his shoulder and–

"Al," he whispered, because his brother was sitting there, hair long and way too fucking thin, watching Ed with wide, broken eyes. " _Alphonse_!"

A hand grabbed his shoulder and yanked him back around before he could do more than think about getting up and stumbling over to his brother. He found himself nose-to-non-existent-nose with the figure, and couldn't quite stop a snarl. Its smile just widened, as violent and cruel as anything in the real world. "That's your price," it told him, its tone making Ed want to scurry away again. "Finish what Van Hohenheim abandoned, and you'll get your brother back. But, should you fail..." 

Ed swallowed, didn't want to know what his price would be, then. 

It patted his cheek with his own right hand, smile mocking, before standing up and stepping away, while the sound of stone creaking open filled the empty space. 

Ed twisted, turned, reached out his hand toward his brother and didn't care that he toppled over and knocked his head against the white floor, just wanted– needed–

" _ **ALPHONSE!**_ "

\--March 1806--

Ed opened his eyes and stared down at the wood his cheek was resting against for a long moment, before letting out a snarl and shoving himself into a sitting position. That hadn't gone at _all_ like he'd hoped. (Although, if he was being honest, it had gone better than he'd feared.) Al was still trapped over there, and would continue to be until Ed figured out what the hell their father had been up to before he'd died. 

Grumbling uncomplimentary things under his breath, Ed turned to look for his crutch, only to frown when he came up empty. 

"What?" he murmured, raising his eyes toward the table he'd shoved out of the way of the massive array he'd drawn in a desperate attempt to go after his brother. With some minor difficulty, he managed to slide his way over to the closest edge and, gritting his teeth, pulled himself to his feet, then used his height advantage to scan the mess of what had been a dining room, before he'd broken in and repurposed it. 

Still no sign of his crutch. 

"I _just had it_ ," Ed muttered, looking down at the array, because he'd used the chalk hidden in the bottom to draw the array at his feet. He'd had it in that white world, too–

Ed carefully leant back against the edge of the table so he could scratch at his head. "Did I...leave it there?" he mumbled. It wasn't unusual for him to misplace things – Al had often joked that he'd lose his head if it wasn't attached – but he hadn't thought it possible to leave non-living objects in that world. Although, if the Door was the physical form of whatever being decided the equivalence for any alchemic transmutation, with the white being serving as some sort of Doorkeeper, or toll-taker, it wasn't completely outside the realm of acceptability that a non-living, physical object could be left behind as a sort of toll. 

Not that Ed had intended his bleeding crutch to be a toll for...whatever had just happened. Letting him go unscathed? 

He let out a laugh that wasn't even a little amused, because he honestly hadn't cared if he made it back, while he'd been drawing this array. Had actually sort of expected to pay the toll for his passage with his own life, because, at least then, he'd be with Al again. And Mum, too, although she'd become far less important than his brother, after all their struggles. 

"Hah. And look where selflessness got me this time," he said to the empty space where armour should have been standing next to him, tutting at his absent-mindedness and already looking around for materials to make him a new crutch. "What am I supposed to do now?" 

Find out what Hohenheim had left unfinished, he supposed. Which required him to move, and not get caught by what sounded suspiciously like the residents returning from church. 

Muttering curses under his breath, Ed balanced himself on the table edge, then kicked out with his peg leg, knocking it into a bucket full of water he'd set out earlier, hard enough to tip it over onto the array. The water splashed over the chalk, erasing enough to hopefully keep anyone from realising there was someone practicing human transmutation in the area. Assuming any of the locals were proficient enough with alchemy to recognise the array for what it was, or make a note of it to share with whatever local alchemists there were. (All unlikely, given, but still not worth the risk, as Ed had learnt years ago.) 

While the water spread across the floor, Ed pulled one of his few remaining pieces of chalk out of his pocket and turned to sketch a quick array on the edge of the table, then pressed his fingers against it and transmuted a replacement crutch. 

With something to lean on again, Ed took one last, quick look at the remainders of the array, deemed it sufficiently erased, then hobbled as quickly as he could for the back door and the screen of woods that would, he hoped, protect him from any of the residents who thought to look out after him. 

Once in the trees, he had to slow down, keeping a sharp eye out for anything that might trip him up, and gingerly checking ahead with his crutch for places that might make him lose his footing. All things that Al used to do for him, calling back warnings and spewing apologies any time Ed tripped despite the warnings, rushing to help him up while Ed laughed and insisted he was fine, even when he wasn't. 

Somehow, he made it to the river safely, and made his slow, careful way across it, before finally sitting down to rest. 

"Now what?" he whispered to himself, hated the silence where there should have been some sort of response from his brother. Mocking, because Ed was talking to himself _again_ , and 'This is why people think you're crazy, Brother.' Or helpful, pointing out the more logical next step; usually getting Ed food, or medical attention. 

_Medical attention_. Hells, if Al was here, he'd have Ed's head for not taking proper care of the wound on his side. 

It was only as Ed was gingerly twisting to get at the wound, that he realised that it didn't hurt, and he followed that up by giving up on caution and yanking his shirt up, catching it between his teeth to free his hand so he could pull the bandaging out of the way to see. 

Where the wound should have been was a long-healed scar, the blood on the bandaging and smeared across his skin already mostly dried dark brown and flaking away. 

"What?" he said, his shirt slipping from between his teeth and blocking his view. Not only had he made it out of that other world without losing any more body parts, but he'd been _healed_? That was–

"This makes no sense," Ed murmured as he pulled his shirt off completely, so he could get the bandaging off. "There was nothing equivalent about that transaction, unless the trade was Al, but he was already back over there before I made my way, so that shouldn't have counted. Which means that freak had to take _something_ from me." 

He dropped the unwound bandaging into the river, catching the trailing edge with his foot and leaving it for the current to clean, even as he did a quick check of himself, trying to determine what had been taken in exchange for his safe passage and good health. 

Nothing. 

Something very like terror was beginning to unfurl in Ed's stomach, and he swallowed down the taste of panic on his tongue as he leant over to grab his shirt off the ground. 

"Okay," he said to himself as he put his shirt back on, the noise of his own voice painfully reassuring. "So I assume I traded _something_ , I just can't determine _what_ , and there's no point worrying over it right this moment. That white freak said something about Hohenheim leaving something unfinished, and it being my job to finish it. And then I get Al back, safe. _Whole_."

His stomach churned again, because _what was the price_?

He took a deep breath and leant over to catch the edge of the bandage, holding it up to give it a quick glance-over; he'd left his suitcase and most of his belongings with Al's abandoned armour body, as he didn't have any way to carry it while also being able to use his crutch, so he needed to recycle as much as he could until he could restock. 

"Fine," he decided, before scrunching it up in a ball and squeezing it as dry as he could. Then he started to get up, shoving the damp ball into a pocket, but the ache of his stump reminded him he needed to fix his peg leg, and since he was surrounded by trees... 

Twenty minutes later, his peg leg repaired and refitted comfortably – a thousand times harder without Al there to manage the buckles for him; he'd need to redesign the set-up if it took him too long to find Hohenheim – Ed was up and following the river out of the woods, hoping it led him to a town or village or _something_. Somewhere he could get supplies, because it was a long trip back to the last place he remembered Al saying he'd heard mention of their missing father. 

He allowed himself a sigh at the task before him, but nothing more. After all, this was for _Al_.

-0-

It took Ed two days to begin to understand what he'd traded. 

It began with finding himself less-than-hungry, and never quite feeling worse than a little out of breath after climbing a hill, despite the familiar strain travelling usually put on his body. He _could_ eat and sleep – more than Al'd ever managed, and it would always ache to remember that – but neither action seemed to affect him in any particular way. 

Which, well, given his limited supplies and not having a second person to keep an eye out, not to mention the ever-dwindling purse of coins, these new discoveries weren't a _bad_ thing. In fact, being able to travel for extended periods of time, moving at a steady pace and not having to break for a meal, served him well in returning to that village in a timely fashion. (And he was all about timely fashions; the sooner he had Al back, the better for both of them. And not just because Ed needed someone to act as a barrier between himself and the rest of humanity.) 

Necessary or not, he _did_ take breaks, mostly because it felt weird not to, but also because the peg leg would start chafing after a few hours of walking, and whatever weird shit was going on with him didn't really fix that issue, though the rash he'd often got from wearing it for long periods hadn't yet made a comeback. 

So, when it got painful enough that he had to stop walking for a bit, he'd find a spot out of the sun or foot traffic and either take out a bit of food for a snack, or take a brief nap. 

It was one of the latter sort of stops, eyes already closed and body just starting to drift off to sleep, that Ed felt hands on him, going for the coin purse shoved in the left pocket of his trousers. 

He reacted on instinct, lashing out with what appendages he could, and feeling the rather satisfying connection of both his leg and peg leg hitting something, while his hand caught the sleeve of the arm going after his money and _yanked_ as he opened his eyes to glare at his attacker. 

He got the hand away from his money, but found himself faced with a man wearing a _furious_ glare, and holding a knife in his left hand, which shone in the late evening sun that filtered through the tree Ed had stopped under for his nap. 

"You little shit," the man snarled, while someone else made a pitiful noise beyond him. "That was _stupid_. Shoulda just stayed asleep." 

Ed reached across with his arm, trying to grab the knife or knock it away, he wasn't certain, but it hardly mattered, because the man just caught his wrist in one hand to stop it, then brought the knife across Ed's throat. 

Pain shot through his nerves, so very like that terrible moment when he'd lost his leg and arm, but, this time, it was followed by a sort of numbing cold, and Ed thought, a bit detachedly, about how crap it was that his only shirt was ruined, now. Which was a ridiculous last thought, but there you were. 

He didn't know what he'd been expecting about death, but he was pretty sure it wasn't a brief moment of blackness, before he opened his eyes again to find the same man still leaning over him, his furious expression twisting with horror. He also didn't expect the burn of his throat – no longer quite so agonising, and getting better with each beat of his heart, too loud in his ears – or the sudden return of hunger that had been missing for days. 

"Shouldn'ta done that," he rasped, and his voice sounded a _wreck_ , blood dribbling out past the words and over his lips, down his chin. But he was so very clearly _alive_ , despite it all. 

Alive and _starved_. But not for the grain mix he had in the shoulder bag he'd made out of some abandoned laundry, he realised. Rather, for the life's blood pulsing all-too-obviously in the man's throat. 

He didn't think, didn't _consider_ , just reached out, running completely on instinct, and caught the man's shirt, pulling him in with a strength that Ed had never known he'd possessed, and leaning up to dig his canines – unnaturally lengthened and sharp enough to pierce flesh with very little effort, it turned out – into the man's throat, directly over the pulse of life. 

The man screamed – terror and pain both – and shoved against Ed, tried to squirm free, and really just causing Ed's teeth to tear his skin, let loose too much blood, too fast. 

The man fell silent first, and then limp. And, as his blood turned cold in Ed's mouth, he realised what had just happened. 

He shoved the dead body off of himself and pushed and shoved at the ground to get away. He was sticky all over, and the taste of iron coated his tongue. 

"Whatthehellwhatthehellwhatthehe–?"

Ed snapped his mouth shut and tried to breathe in through his nose, but all he could smell was blood, and he just barely managed to twist to one side before he threw up. 

Bile and the lunch he'd eaten hours ago splattered across the grass, but there was no sign of the blood he'd ingested, and Ed tried to draw a breath, caught it on a sob, and fisted his hand in the grass. 

Blood on his tongue, coating his lips and chin; he'd taken a life, utterly without being aware of it, but _still_. What sort of monster had he _become_?

Someone screamed, and Ed looked up, toward them, found a woman and a couple young children staring at him. The woman looked terrified – horrified, sickened; Ed completely understood – for a long moment, before she shouted, _"Monster!"_

As she turned back toward the little hamlet Ed had skirted around the edge of before taking his nap, he realised he needed to _go_. No time to process or clean himself off, just move as fast as he could, away from the pitchforks and religious ramblings that he and Al had been faced with more than a couple of times over their years of travel, either because of alchemy, or because someone realised Al's armour had been empty. 

He found his crutch, half under the man who'd tried to kill him, and caught it and his bag, grimacing at the blood splattered across both of them, but in too much of a rush to be picky about their state. 

He hurried away, toward a cluster of trees, moving as fast as he dared, and paying more attention to the way ahead, than the possibility of pursuit; he'd learnt a long time ago the dangers of not looking where he was going, given his disabilities. 

He found a stream before he reached the edge of the woods, and he fell gratefully to his knees on the bank, dropping his crutch so he could rinse himself off, splashing water everywhere and leaving a line of pale red to rush away downstream, as far away from him as the water could take the evidence. 

His shirt was left to soak in the water, held down by a rock, and Ed finally leant back, touching his fingers to his throat. The skin felt a little over-sensitive to the touch, like a wound he'd only just ripped the scab off of, but that was the only sign that the skin had been slit open with a knife not twenty minutes before. 

"What's happened to me?" he whispered to the empty wood around him, words laced with terror and edged with a sob. "What has that freak _done_ to me?" 

Because he had no doubt this had something to do with that white figure and the equivalence he'd been so certain he'd owed, yet hadn't been able to calculate. 

But what did...drinking blood and (apparently) immortality have to do with being sent after Hohenheim's work? 

_'Your father's dead,'_ the white figure had said. _'He left things unfinished, things that are now left to _you_ , Alchemist, as the last of his blood.'_

Hohenheim had died, and the figure wanted Ed to finish what he'd left. Except Ed was the last person left, apparently, with his useless father dead and Al trapped in that other world. Which meant, if he died... 

"Well," Ed whispered, "when put like that, it does make some sense. But the...blood?" 

Equivalence. A life for a life. Keeping the balance of blood in his own body; whatever was spilled needed to be replaced. Just like how any water sweated or cried needed to be replaced. 

"I'm going to be sick again," Ed whispered, closing his eyes. Because making sense out of this horror did nothing for the emotional reaction. 

Fuck. As soon as he'd finished whatever Hohenheim had failed to do, he was going to punch that white monster in the face. And then yank his brother well away from that place, hope he never learned exactly what Ed had had to do to save him. 

And then Ed caught himself laughing, covered his face with his hand and tried to pretend he didn't feel the water splattering against his palm. Because Al would almost certainly take one look at him and know _exactly_ what Ed had done, because they were _brothers_. They were everything to each other, and Al had always known Ed better than he'd known himself. 

Well, perhaps it was only equivalent; Ed could save his brother, but only at the cost of his own soul. What did that one religion popular in the west call it? 'Making a deal with the devil'? 

He certainly had, at that. 

A bit distantly, Ed wondered how sane he'd be when he finally saved Al. 

(He supposed it depended how many more times he died.) 

\--July 1807--

It took Ed over a year to track down Hohenheim's corpse. To be fair, he was trying to condense _years_ worth of travel into the shortest time possible, but it still felt like it had taken forever, especially since he didn't, actually, know _when_ his no-good father had died, only that he _had_.

Along the way, since he was asking about the man, hearing about him was a bit difficult to avoid, and he discovered a lot about the man that he'd never known. 

For example, apparently the cold eyes and too-wide back had hidden a lot of helpless smiles and a rather meek man who shied away from fighting, but would always step in to keep someone from getting hurt. He also, by far too many accounts, survived all manner of wounds, including such that should have killed him, red light sparking along the wounds, which healed in an instant. 

The stories were too widespread to be myths, and Ed didn't want to, but he slowly began believing a lot of them. Most of them. Helpless smiles and helping people, because that seemed a bit more the sort of person Mum would have wanted to have a family with, certainly. But the shying away from fighting? Fuck, Ed was disabled and he had never once shied away from a fight. (Which, in retrospect, may not always be the best way to respond to things, especially given he no longer had a second person to watch his back.) 

And, while it might seem odd to others, believing his father had been some sort of immortal had been the easiest bit of the stories to swallow, likely because he, himself, was currently immortal. Though, he did have to wonder, a bit, about limitations, since Hohenheim _had_ eventually died, which had resulted in Ed's own curse, in a way. 

And his curse was clearly different from Hohenheim's, because he'd nicked himself enough time in the year plus since that first incident to observe his skin quietly healing over, no show of red energy. And not a one of the stories ever mentioned anything about his father drinking blood, though Ed had discovered that he couldn't seem to stop himself from attacking whoever had attacked him once he'd come back from that brief blackness that was as close to death as he could get. If he didn't actively _die_ , he could hold off the weird hunger for blood for a while, but it got harder the longer he left it, and normal food or drink would just make him sick if he needed blood when he ingested any. 

Animal blood, he'd discovered on accident, could stave off the hunger for a bit – the length of time depended on how hungry he'd been, and how much he...drank – but it never seemed to fix it the way human blood did. Which was...more than a little heartbreaking, because Ed had been _so fucking happy_ when the hunger left him because of a particularly bloody steak he hadn't been able to refuse, but then it had come back that night, and he'd nearly started sobbing into the nice sheets of the first real bed he'd allowed himself to chance in over two months. 

He'd had a lot of time and a lot of _reason_ to experiment, so he'd done a few tests between signs of civilisation, trying all sorts of tests with animal blood – still gross, but far less stomach-turning than killing humans, and he'd done so enough times, by then, to know that truth – and cutting himself, then immediately licking up the blood that spilled before the wound healed itself. (Always a delay, just enough to lose a noticeable amount of blood, as though the white freak who'd done this to him was _trying_ to break him, or some bullshit. Not that Ed would put that against the figure.) 

More animal blood kept the hunger at bay longer, and if he managed to catch all the blood from his own wounds, he didn't end up feeling any hungrier, which was reassuring, but not wholly a solution, given he couldn't always stop to lick his wounds until they healed. 

Still, it was enough knowledge to reach the village where Hohenheim had died without resorting to killing any random strangers because he'd nicked himself on some bramble one too many times. And he'd learnt fairly quickly to kill an animal and drink its blood before he entered a settlement, so he could eat like a normal person without being sick right after. (Even better, he could bring that animal into town with him and trade the meat and pelt for room and board, which made up, some, for his not needing to eat, but taking food from those who did to keep up appearances.) 

After he and the innkeeper had finished bartering over the three rabbits Ed'd brought in and he'd been given a glass of water, Ed asked the familiar, "So, any guys named Hohenheim come through?" 

The innkeeper immediately started nodding, which wasn't unusual in the places where his father had stayed to help out a bit. "Deity, more like," he insisted. 

Ed blinked, couldn't keep from raising one eyebrow and shooting the guy a disbelieving look, because _what?_ Immortal, sure, he was used to that line, but _deity_?

"Ya think me some poor country fool," the innkeeper said, but he didn't look particularly cross about it. "We're used to those reactions, I assure ya, but not a one o' us what was here when the wind storm came'll ever disbelieve." 

A wind storm? Ed had heard of Hohenheim facing bands of bandits, violent animals, and mad alchemists. Repairing broken objects, too, was pretty common, or clearing roads blocked by a tree or a rock slide, but never directly facing an act of nature. 

He leant forward and tried to look like he was more interested than sceptical as he said, "So, go on, then. What's a bit of a wind storm got to do with you calling Van Hohenheim a deity?" 

The man perked up, clearly excited at the chance to share the story. "Oh, this weren't just _any_ wind storm. We thought it were, at first, tacked down anything that might get blown away a bit, sent the little 'uns and smaller animals indoors, just in case, 'cause we've lost a coupla chickens and a cat ta winds before, ya know." 

Ed nodded, even though he actually _didn't_ know; strong wind storms hadn't been common in the border village he'd grown up in, and they weren't particularly common anywhere he'd travelled. Too many mountains and trees acting as a screen against strong winds building up, he'd read in one book or another, when he and Al had found their way to Amestris' capital city a few years before. 

"Glad we did, mind, 'cause this weren't no normal wind storm. Started out normal, but then the clouds started reachin' down, right towards the middle o' town. And Van Hohenheim, he'd only just arrived a coupla hours before, he were outta his chair soon as ol' Bob said that. Ran out ta the street and threw up his hands towards them clouds, and there were this great blindin' o' light, and then the clouds done and picked him right up and all jerked sideways right outta town. Landed the whole bit in the middle o' the woods–" he pointed in the opposite direction from where Ed had come "–and tore up all sorta a' trees, threw 'em all o'er the place. Took us near a week ta cut through and find Van lying out in the middle o' the mess, all peaceful like. 

"Can't imagine what woulda happened to this town if those clouds'd touched ground here, but ya get a pretty good idea, ya see the clearin'. Coupla folks started calling Van a god, and I'm not so sure I disbelieve, 'cause he done an impossible thing for us, and he were aged so much when we found him. Clothin' all torn, but not a scratch on him, save his hair'd gone white and his skin wrinkled like he'd done and died a' old age, not fightin' winds and clouds." 

"He was human, I assure you," Ed insisted. 

The innkeeper snorted. "Know that for sure, do ya? Ya know all them stories 'bout the gods comin' down and travellin' like humans for a time, doin' good. Maybe he were one o' those." 

Ed shook his head. "Yeah, but he had two sons, and they're human all through." Well, if you didn't count his own curse and the animal blood staving off his unnatural hunger. And Al being trapped in that other world, waiting for Ed to uphold his end of the bargain with the white figure. 

"How d'ya know they ain't demigods, and're jest hidin' it?" the innkeeper challenged. 

Ed let out a short bark of a laugh and pointed to his empty right sleeve. "I look like a bleedin' demigod to you?" 

The innkeeper's eyes widened, then narrowed, and he leant forward, across the table, staring at Ed's face. "Bless my soul," he whispered after a moment, voice gone reverent, "ya got the same eyes. Gold as the sun." 

Ed shifted, always felt a little weird when people spotted his eyes and realised how weird they were, how like his father's. 

And then the man drew back and fluttered his hands a bit weirdly, asked, "Ta what do we owe the honour–"

" _No_ ," Ed interrupted, because that was _creepy_. "I'm not some freaking part-god, and my father wasn't a god, he was just an alchemist. He did some crazy shit to save people sometimes, but he was still human. Died and everything, probably just used too much energy trying to dissipate the storm and ended up ageing and dying. It's not impossible." 

Okay, actually, it kind of _was_ , but if Hohenheim had some sort of immortality, just like Ed, it made a weird sort of sense that he could over-strain whatever energy source was keeping him alive, tap into his own life energy to keep going, and eventually age himself. Right? 

(Not that Ed knew what sort of energy source would grant immortality, but, then, it was clear there were plenty of things about both his father and the laws of equivalence that he didn't understand, if Hohenheim had managed to hold off nature.) 

"I'm just– Look, okay, my brother's sick, same thing that killed our mum, and I know our father had some fair bit of medical knowledge, went looking for a cure for her. I was hoping to talk to him, or at least get a look at whatever journals or notes he might have had, if he didn't finish his research, see if I couldn't sort it myself." It was the best excuse he'd come up with to explain why he was looking so desperately for Hohenheim, and it _was_ fairly close to the truth – Mum _had_ died from an illness, and deciphering Hohenheim's notes and completing his work _would_ save Al – and it had won him plenty of sympathy over his travels, got a number of people to share titbits about his father he doubted they would have otherwise. Rarely _useful_ titbits, mind, but still. 

"So I'm not... I'm not here to save you from weird weather patterns or a plague of locusts or whatever. I'm just looking for a way to save my little brother. He's– He's all I have left, now." And that had been true for _years_ , but saying it aloud always hurt, a bit, and this was the first time he'd said it to someone who also knew the last of his blood family was _gone_.

The innkeeper's expression had fallen as Ed spoke, but he didn't look _disappointed_ , so much as a little bit of pity and a lot of shared grief, as though he could _ever_ hope to know what Hohenheim's death meant for Ed. "I'm sorry, then, that ya had ta find out this way," he offered, an apology that Ed simply shook his head at, hoped the guy took it as not being able to speak through his emotions, rather than the slightly callous disregard it was. "And I'm sorry he ain't here ta help, but we did save the pack he left behind when he went after the storm." 

Ed straightened, didn't have to pretend relief at that news. "Where is it?" 

"Village head's got it up at his. But he went out with the huntin' party. Be a few hours yet 'fore they're back. We buried Van in the woods where we found him, though, if ya wanna visit with him?" 

Ed desperately wanted to say no, to just ask directions to the right house and break in to grab Hohenheim's stuff. But, well, they'd expect him to head up to the grave and see it at least once before he left, might as well be before he got his hands on his father's journals and got distracted trying to break whatever code he'd used. 

So he nodded in agreement, took a moment to put his bag up in the room his rabbits had bought him, then followed the innkeeper's directions up to the edge of the woods and a sign that pointed to a well-travelled path. 

The path branched off a couple times – hunter or animal trails, they looked like, but the main path was too obvious for him to get confused – before passing under an odd sort of archway and opening up into a clearing that was pretty close to the size of one of the houses down in the village, with trees and other ground debris thrown around the edges, forming a massive sort of wall, the only break in which was the man-made one that Ed had just stepped through. 

Given it had been at least sixteen months since Hohenheim's death, based on when he'd first heard about it from the white figure, Ed wasn't surprised to find the clearing covered in grass, save a narrow path leading from the entrance to a barren patch in the centre. There was a ring of little golden flowers Ed didn't know the name for around the barren patch, which was weird, but Ed assumed they'd been planted by someone. Someone had certainly, he saw as he stepped closer, taken to leaving offerings of cheap food and alcohol and a couple flowers at the end of the path. 

He rolled his eyes a bit, then looked past the flowers and such at the barren patch. 

Ed had never been one for talking to graves, but he'd also never had to stand over one alone, and the _ache_ of Al's absence was just _so great_ , in that moment, that he couldn't stop himself from opening his mouth and saying, "Are you happy?" 

He snapped his mouth shut, gritted his teeth, but now that he'd started speaking, he couldn't stop the words, so he clenched his fist around his crutch and let them flow: 

"Is this what you wanted, when you left? Mum died and me and Al just fell apart. Old Man Jeeves down the way, he tried to help, and Gran Emma, she'd check in all the time, bring us food when her hips would let her. Bringing Mum back was the only thing that kept us going, and we went and failed at that! 

"And where were _you_?! Playing good neighbour or some sort of deity to strangers! You _abandoned_ us! I bet you never even cared, not once. Just happy to leave us behind! I mean, seriously, immortality, huh? Takes a lot out of you to stick around in the same place all the time, letting people find out about you. 

"Well, good on you, then, finally croaking. Leaving me whatever mess you failed at!" He choked out a laugh that felt raw. "You just had to go and die, didn't you? Couldn't even sort your last duty out on your own, had to leave it to me, had to fail me and Al all over again." He closed his eyes, swallowed against a block in his throat, and quietly asked, "Why couldn't you, just once, have cared about us, as much as you did about everyone else in the world?"

"Mr Hohenheim?" someone called from behind Ed. 

He twisted, turned to look, and found a girl who looked to be ten or eleven standing just down the narrow path from him, a handful of wildflowers clenched in one hand and her eyes gone wide. "No," Ed replied, shaking his head. "I'm Ed, his son." 

She blinked a couple of times, then said, "Oh." And then she stepped forward and knelt next to Ed to set the wildflowers with the other offerings. "Ya didn't bring him anythin'?" 

Ed looked away from the barren patch, toward the impossible wall of trees. He felt a bit wrong-footed; raw and aching and still so angry. But, too, so very _lonely_.

He missed Al. 

"Don't really have any way to carry anything," he managed to force out, kept his face turned away so she wouldn't realise the attempt at humour was only in his voice. Assuming he'd managed that much. 

"Well, I'm sure he'd be grateful ya came at all," the girl offered. 

He scoffed, then, and turned away from the grave. "I somehow doubt that." 

"Yer rude!" the girl snapped. "Mr Hohenheim were a _great_ man! He saved all our lives, and is deservin' o' our respect! _Especially_ yers, since he's yer dad!" 

Ed glanced back over his shoulder at her furious expression, debated just walking away for a brief moment, but he didn't really want to chance losing access to Hohenheim's journals because some kid spread it around that he was actually _glad_ their saviour had kicked the bucket. (Sort of.) So he sighed and turned back to face her properly. "He may have been my father, but he left before he could become my dad; this is the first time I've seen him in over ten years, and it's his _grave_. I get that you people think he's great, but the only memory I have of him, is his back and the slamming of the door as he left." 

The girl looked away, her expression twisting with confusion and anger. "Then why come at all? Ta spit on his grave?" she snapped, though there was far less bite in her words than before. 

"I'm hoping he left something to help me save my brother's life. He's sick, and my mum said, before she died of the same illness, that my father had left to find a cure," Ed lied. "I didn't know he'd died until the innkeeper told me." 

"Oh," the girl whispered, sounding heartbroken. When she looked up at him, there were tears in her eyes. "I-I didn't know." 

Ed shrugged and turned to leave the clearing. "And I wouldn't have spat on his grave, anyway. No point." 

He thought she'd stayed behind, until he was back in the wood and she popped up next to him, walking just the right speed to keep pace with his careful steps. 

"Yes?" 

"Yer lookin' fer his journals, yeah?" 

"Yeah," Ed agreed, seeing no reason to hide that. "Innkeeper said the village leader's got them." 

The girl nodded. "My da. I know where he keeps 'em." 

Ed couldn't quite bite back a laugh, and it came out sounding a little startled. "Who was it was just saying something about respecting their father?" 

She flushed and ducked her head. "Da won't mind. And they should be yers, anyway, Mr Hohenheim bein' yer dad 'n all, right?" 

"Right," Ed agreed, because that was true enough. 

She grinned at him, then, wide and bright and showing off a missing canine tooth. "I'm Joann!" she offered. 

"Nice to meet you, Joann," Ed returned, amused by the rather abrupt change in temperament; he was pretty certain he'd been just as bad at her age, honestly. 

She proceeded to tell him the story of Hohenheim saving the village again, then moved on to talking about the villagers, so that, by the time they reached her house, Ed felt rather like he knew a bit about everyone that lived nearby. 

The bag Hohenheim had left behind had been stored in a dark room near the back of her house, shoved in a corner like it had been forgotten. "Da said somethin' 'bout not bein' able ta read the books," Joann said as she held up the bag. 

Ed shifted his weight so he could grab the bag, then tossed the strap over his head. "He was an alchemist, Hohenheim, so he probably kept everything in code. Got somewhere I can sit down?" 

She nodded and stepped past him. "This way. What's an alchemist?" 

Ed blinked at her back a few times, surprised into inaction. When she frowned back at him, he cleared his throat. "Alchemy is a science. Turning one object into another with similar properties." 

"Sounds like magic," she informed him, before continuing walking. 

Ed stepped a bit quicker than normal to catch her up, scoffing. " _Magic_ ," he spat, and she shot him a startled look. "Alchemy is a _science_. Not... _hocus pocus_."

She giggled at that and pointed to what appeared to be the dining room table. "Can ya do it, yer alchemy?" 

Ed huffed and sat at the table, setting his crutch aside so he could take Hohenheim's bag off his head. "Of course. My brother and I both studied it." 

She hopped up onto the seat across from him and leant forward over the table, catching her chin between her hands. "Can ya show me?" 

"Have you got any paper? Scraps, like?" 

"Yeah!" She jumped up and raced from the room. 

Ed snorted and turned his attention to the bag, grimacing a bit when he realised the tie had been knotted a couple times; that would take him a while to get open. 

He'd managed to mostly get the first knot undone by the time Joann came back with a handful of paper scraps, and he set the bag aside and pulled out the pencil he kept with his store of chalk, then proceeded to use alchemy to fold the papers into various animals for her. (After the first one – and the resulting disbelieving gasp, followed by a delighted grin – she'd started suggesting the animals, and Ed was glad he didn't actually need to know _how_ the alchemy folded the paper, only the end result he wanted, because some of them looked ridiculously complicated.) 

Her father got home as they were running out of paper, and the innkeeper must have warned him about Ed, because he didn't seem to be surprised to see him, and greeted him with, "So, yer Van's son." 

Ed had shot him a speculative look, because he didn't sound nearly as quick to believe that as the innkeeper and Joann had been – it was oddly gratifying to not be taken at his word right off – but as soon as the man saw his eyes, his own widened and he breathed out something that sounded worryingly like a short prayer, or whatever. Ed didn't sigh, and hoped he'd managed to keep the grimace off his face as he nodded. "Ed," he said, setting down his pencil and twisting to hold out his hand. 

The man was still for a moment, before reaching out and taking Ed's hand to shake. He had a stronger grip than most people used when they realised Ed was missing an arm, like they thought its lack meant he would fall apart at too rough a touch, which was a nice change. "Richard. We had no idea Van had children, but there weren't really time ta talk 'fore the winds started up." 

"Hm," was all Ed would let himself say in response as he withdrew his hand and picked his pencil back up to finish drawing his array. Then he activated it, and Joann let out another delighted laugh and clapped, while Richard let out a shocked noise. "It's alchemy," Ed said as he handed the rabbit across to Joann. "Same thing my father used to save your village, but he was way better than I'll probably ever be." 

"Alchemy," Richard repeated. "I remember hearin' o' such from a travellin' merchant when I were younger, but I've never seen it. He said it were a science practised in the city?" 

"It's a science, yeah, not magic," Ed agreed, setting the remaining few papers and his pencil aside and smiling a bit at Joann's clear pleasure over the figures he'd made; it had been a long time since he'd created things with alchemy just because it would make someone else smile, and it was actually quite nice to do so again, especially since Joann so clearly enjoyed it. "And I don't know I'd say it's _only_ practised in the city, because I've met country alchemists, learnt from one, even, but they do tend to congregate in the cities, share their research and teach hopefuls. That sort of thing." He shrugged. 

Richard let out a non-committal hum as he leant down next to Ed and picked up Hohenheim's bag. "I don't pretend ta understand anythin' 'bout alchemy, nor 'bout healin' illnesses, but it is true enough that Van left behind some notebooks that none o' us that looked could make sense a'." 

"Went snooping?" Ed asked, more amused than anything else. 

Richard coughed and set the bag on the table, then started working on the knots. "I'd been hopin' ta learn more of him. Perhaps, if he had family, ta inform them. Though it's true that some wanted proof o' his divinity." 

Ed snorted at the last. "Wouldn't have found anything." 

"So you say," Richard returned, his tone so mild, Ed was certain he was one of the ones who believed Hohenheim was some sort of god. Or whatever otherworldly being they were marking him as. 

Somehow, he kept from snorting again, or rolling his eyes. 

Richard got the last knot loose and opened the bag properly, then reached in and pulled out a worn leather-covered book. "Here's the one that were on the top o' the bag," he offered with the book. As Ed accepted it, Richard added, "Pretty sure it's not written in Amestrisan, mind." 

Ed frowned at that and opened the book, only to find what looked like scribbles, sort of, more than letters. Another alphabet? 

Fuck. How was he supposed to decipher this? 

Ed grit his teeth, feeling a little like Al's soul was slipping through his fingers all over again. He'd been _so close_. And now he was faced with a journal he couldn't _begin_ to guess at how to translate? He couldn't even be certain if it was another language, or some sort of code Hohenheim had created. (Though, given none of the books he'd left behind when he'd left had used these scribbles, despite his occasional handwritten notes about his own studies in the margins, it wasn't likely to be a code. Ed didn't think.) 

"No good?" Richard guessed. 

_Fuck_. If only he had an idea of where to look for a translation. Someone he could go to and ask for help. 

Ed stopped breathing for a moment, staring down at the scribbles with wide eyes, because there _was_ someone he had access to who would know. And while the last thing he wanted was to be even deeper in debt to the white freak, if it wanted him to solve this puzzle and finish Hohenheim's duty, it would at least give him a hint. 

(If not, well, it would be nice to have someone to yell at about this curse the freak had set on him. Which could go so horribly wrong, true, but Ed wasn't certain he cared after a year of trying to hunt something – _anything_ – down, while also being forced to kill people who attacked him on the road; there was a point when the potential danger was outweighed by the current stressors, evidently.) 

"I...might know someone who can translate this," Ed said, letting the book fall closed. "Don't really want to deal with them, but I need this for my brother." He looked up at Richard, found him staring down at the open bag with a troubled expression. "Thank you. This is the closest I've come in almost eight years." 

Richard's whole body jerked at that, and then he pushed the opened bag toward Ed. And there was something in his eyes – a little broken, but maybe also relieved? – that Ed couldn't quite figure out, but he smiled as he said, "I'm glad we could be of assistance. After what yer dad did fer us, it's truly a great thing to know we're able to pay him back by helpin' his sons." 

Ed managed a smile in response to that as he slipped the book back into the bag, then set about closing the tie in a quick, one-handed knot that he would be able to open easily later on. "I should get back to the inn, go through the rest of this," he said as he stood. "I shouldn't need more than the books, probably, and I can't carry a lot easily; I expect you could find someone who'd get use out of the clothing and whatever else?" he suggested, because that was what Al would have done, and it was quite true that Ed didn't need the extra weight dragging him down during his travels. 

Richard's eyes widened and then he smiled, quickly nodding. "Yes, of course," he agreed, so quickly Ed was fairly certain Hohenheim's belongings would be enshrined somewhere. 

With _that_ disturbing thought in mind, Ed turned to Joann as he picked the bag up and looped it around his neck and arm. "Good to have met you, Joann." 

She grinned at him and held up the paper bird he'd made first. "Yeah! Ya should bring yer brother when he's better 'n show me more alchemy!" 

"I will," Ed promised, and meant it. 

Richard saw him off, and Ed returned to the inn with the pack. It didn't take long to go through everything in his room and separate out the things that looked like they'd have some value – all books, as he'd guessed – then shove the rest of it back away to return to Richard. Fitting all the books in his own bag took a bit longer, but he managed it without having to make his bag larger, which was good. 

He stayed through dinner, returning the bag to Richard when he and Joann came to eat at the inn, and suffering through all manner of people praising Hohenheim. 

That night, after everyone should have retired to their beds, Ed slipped out as quietly as he was able. He walked what felt like all night, until he felt he was far enough away – and deep enough in the woods – that no one would track him down and discover what he was doing. Then he set about redrawing the array that was becoming way too familiar, stuffed a couple of his father's books in a quickly alchemised bag, and stepped into the centre. 

He knelt, pressing his fingers to the nearest line and stared forward, determinedly unafraid, as the blue light bled purple, and everything went white.

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art for this chapter:  
> [Truth](http://arantxamagnelli.tumblr.com/post/152576533037/its-time-to-begin-posting-heres-my-first-fanart) by [arantxmagnelli](http://arantxamagnelli.tumblr.com/)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All the nods to [Mere](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Mere)'s glorious [Second Chances, New Places](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5997063) for the idea of a band of Xerxesian survivors roaming the desert.

"Alchemist," the white figure said, tone bland.

Ed didn't have time to figure out what that meant, before something – some _one_ – tackled him from behind and a hauntingly familiar voice sobbed, " _Brother_!"

" _Al_ ," Ed recognised, let his crutch and bag both fall to the ground as he twisted to wrap his arm around his brother and press his face against a bare, too-skeletal shoulder. And he _hated_ how thin Al was, how he shook like it was taking everything he had to keep standing. But, too, it was a _relief_. He was alive, had a body, and _Ed could hug him_. That alone was worth any cost the white freak might require in return for this visit. 

"Human transmutation," said white figure announced, just a hint of irritation in its voice, "is not a revolving door to be used at your leisure." 

Ed had no idea what a revolving door was – though he could make a couple guesses, and wondered why anyone would want to use such an oddity – but he did gather enough from the line to shoot back, "Shouldn't have mucked up the price for it, then." 

" _Brother_ ," Al hissed, disapproving. 

Ed huffed and squeezed him once, then pulled away enough to turn and look at where the figure was holding one of Hohenheim's books. "I can't figure out shit if I can't read his notes," he pointed out. 

"It's not my job to hand you answers, Alchemist," the figure returned flatly, as Ed's stolen fingers flipped through the pages far too carelessly. "As I've already told you." 

"And I don't want to waste another year wandering aimlessly around, hoping I get lucky," Ed shot back, and Al's hands on his arm and shoulder squeezed in silent warning. But Al didn't know the cost Ed was paying, had no idea about the blood already staining his hand; there was no way he could understand how much Ed _could not_ keep on the way he had been. He desperately needed to be able to sit down and research in peace, without having to watch his back every second, wary of being attacked; not for the sake of his own safety, but for the life of his attacker. "Either you give me a hint, or I revolve the door until you get sick of me. Or whatever." 

If the figure actually had a face, Ed was nearly certain it would be giving him the _most_ disgusted look he'd ever seen. (Which was saying something; Ed'd been on the receiving end of many a disgusted look.) "You try my patience, Alchemist," it warned. 

Ed couldn't stop from tightening his arm around Al's waist a bit, pulling him just that littlest bit closer, and he grit his teeth against any response he might make, reminded that there would always be a price he wasn't willing to pay: The figure had said it would return Al exactly as he was, but there was always the possibility that Ed could push it too far, and none of this would be worth it if Al returned to him as broken as Ed already was; one of them needed to make it through this mess whole. 

The figure was absolutely still for a long moment, mouth in a long, thin line. Ed was near certain he was being stared at – weighed and measured – and he did his best to keep from fidgeting or letting out the spray of words knocking against the backs of his teeth. 

And then the figure dropped the book back into Ed's bag and held out the strap with its hand of white absence. "In the desert, there are ruins. You'll find answers there, eventually." 

"Thank you," Al said, before Ed could make a smart remark, and nudged Ed until he let go to take the bag. 

The figure turned away from them, offering a bland, "Five minutes, Alchemists." 

And Ed was left alone with his brother. 

"I'm sorry," Al whispered. 

"What do _you_ have to be sorry about?" Ed demanded, turning to face his brother. " _I'm_ the one who insisted we try to bring Mum back." 

"But I _agreed_ ," Al snapped, and it was so unspeakably good to see him _glaring_ , having _actual facial expressions_. "We made that choice _together_ , Edward." 

Ed grunted, because he knew Al'd had his doubts at the time, but Ed had just rushed over any attempts to mention them. But this wasn't the time to rehash that old argument. "Whatever," he muttered, before shaking his head. "Still, you getting stuck here, _that's_ my fault, making deals with–" He stopped himself with a cough, wasn't certain it would be wise to insult the figure where it could hear. 

See? He could totally learn how to think before speaking. (Mostly.)

"I'm sorry I can't be with you," Al insisted, head bowed. "I'm sitting here, safe, while you're out there, suffering–"

Ed forced out a laugh, hoped it didn't sound nearly as much a lie to his brother as it did to him. "I'm hardly _suffering_ , Al, not like you are. I mean, _you're_ the one stuck here with _that one_ as company, and nothing to do all day." 

Al's hand spasmed around Ed's arm and he looked up, his gaze so utterly _heartbroken_. "I know, Brother. I can watch you." 

Watch him? 

It was like someone had just dumped a bucketful of ice water over Ed's head, because _Al knew_. He'd watched Ed revert to animalistic violence, blood coating his mouth and chin and draining down his throat. Seen him throw up meagre meals that he didn't need because the taste of blood on his tongue turned his stomach, or because real food was too abhorrent when he was starved for ever more blood. He'd seen Ed curled up in the dark of the thickest woods, sobbing at the monster he'd become. 

Al knew exactly how much blood coated the hand Ed had used to hug him. 

Ed tore himself away from his brother, stumbling on too-shaky legs, and croaked, "Send me back." 

"Brother!" Al called, and Ed could see it now, that he wasn't the only one who was breaking under the weight of this toll. But he couldn't–

" _EDWARD!_ " Al screamed as the familiar black hands dragged Ed away. 

The last thing Ed saw before the stone doors slammed shut, was the white freak's wide, satisfied grin. 

\--July 1807--

Ed opened his eyes to the patch of woods he'd stopped to draw his array in, lying across the lines he'd scratched in the dirt. Golden light was just beginning to filter through the branches, and Ed closed his eyes against it, against _everything_.

Al knew. He knew _exactly_ what Ed had become. 

And then, with no warning, the hunger hit Ed all at once, and he couldn't stop a gasp, eyes flying open and too-sharp teeth catching the inside of his mouth, sparking a hint of pain, but no blood. 

He felt like he'd just been killed, but a vaguely panicked look around him showed neither sign of human life, nor any spilt blood. There was a squirrel, though, holding still to the side of a trunk and staring at Ed like it was well aware its life was forfeit. 

Ed had lunged across the empty space between them and had a hand around the squirrel before he could realise he was going to do so, and then blood bloomed across his tongue. 

He drained the squirrel dry, then dropped the body to the ground and reached out to lean against the trunk of the tree. His hunger was eased just enough that he could think, and he knew it was temporary, that he would need a bloody _bear_ if he wanted to get this under control for more than a handful of minutes, but–

For the moment, he could think, could step back and consider his next move. 

He hadn't been anywhere near so bad before he'd activated the array. Even discounting the animal blood he'd had before going into that village, he'd been at an easily tolerable level, only really an issue because he'd needed to be able to keep food down for the sake of appearances. Which meant the cost of human transmutation, for him, was losing whatever blood he had. 

He was _so freaking glad_ he'd opted to do this as far from human civilisation as he could get in one night. _Shit_.

Well, he was going to need more animals to be trusted around humans so he could buy supplies for the desert. More to the point, he very probably needed human blood to survive the desert, since animals would be scarce out there. 

So, he needed to kill more animals – brilliant – and then maybe find a criminal of some sort? Someone he could almost stomach killing for his own accursed survival. 

It was for Al. _All_ of this was for Al. And it didn't–

_Fuck_.

It mattered, okay. Al knew, and it mattered, and he probably hated Ed, hated what he'd stooped to, but Ed _couldn't_ give up, not now, not as close as he was. He needed to get his brother out, free them both from this, this... _curse_. And maybe then – when the day came that Ed didn't have to manage his own blood levels for the safety of everyone around him – he could stop, could sit down and face Al's judgement, his disgust. Maybe then, he could try to make up for his crimes, instead of just continuing to drench his hand in the blood of others. 

Ed took a deep breath, hated that he no longer choked on the taste/scent of blood, and pushed away from the tree trunk, wiping away the blood and fur on his face as he looked around for his crutch. 

There was no sign of it. 

"The hell?" Ed muttered, stepping carefully toward the array scratched into the ground. His bag of books was there, but there was no sign of crutch. _Just like last time._

Ed frowned as he carefully made his way over to the bag most of his things were in, bracing his hand against the nearest trunk so he could crouch down without losing his balance in the process. Once he was steady, he pulled open the bag and took out the knife he kept in there, used it to carve away enough of the bark on the trunk next to him that he had space to draw an array, then took out some chalk to do so. 

One quick transmutation later, Ed had a new crutch, and he slipped the chalk he'd used to draw the array away in the compartment for it, then collected all his things – switching the books back to his main bag – and the squirrel carcass to hopefully either trade, or use as bait for larger prey. 

He took a moment to consider his array, then shook his head and turned away; it was unlikely anyone would find it before nature reclaimed it, and even less likely that the person who found it would know what it was for, given how rare alchemy knowledge was in the area. So he left it, picked a direction he was nearly certain was opposite the village Hohenheim had died in, and started walking. 

\--July-December 1807--

He'd discovered, while asking around, that the place the white freak had meant was most likely the ruins of Xerxes, which had belonged to an advanced country that was destroyed in one night about three hundred years before, leaving only one survivor, the man known as the Philosopher of the East, who had brought the art of alchemy to the just-founded country of Amestris. Ed had actually liked the story as a child, had always been the one to ask Mum to tell it again – Al had preferred stories about princes saving the day – but it had never seemed _real_ to him, had never been somewhere he thought he might go. 

And yet. 

It had taken him almost two months to supply up, find someone to give him useful directions, and make it out to the desert ruins. But, still, he managed it in one piece, and it had left him with a sense of accomplishment that felt all-too-rare, any more. 

That said, the ruins were a depressing place, too quiet and empty, and Ed had felt like he was trespassing as he moved carefully through the broken stones, trying not to remember childhood stories and wonder about the truth behind them. (Because he knew, now, what death was, how it felt to slip into that cold embrace, too often without a chance to defend himself.) But it wasn't like he'd had any other choices for his quest, so he'd found himself a building near the centre of the city that wasn't too bad off, turned it into something off a home base, then went searching for whatever resources he could. 

He'd had no luck with finding any books or scrolls or whatever they'd used to write things on back then, but he did find a couple of interior walls with painted-on writing preserved, and painstakingly copied it all over to study in his ruined home. 

But, it seemed there wasn't a single thing to help him translate Hohenheim's books – save the proof that the strange scribbles he'd used were the same as the Xerxesians had, which was vaguely disturbing for a number of reasons – and Ed clung a bit desperately to the white figure's comment about finding a translation 'eventually'. 

That eventually came fairly close to the winter solstice – Ed had a terrible time keeping up with the date, especially as he didn't need to sleep any more, but even he could notice the days getting shorter – when he woke from a nap to the sounds of human voices and rocks shifting. 

He took a deep breath, considered his blood hunger for a moment – he'd taken a couple nasty spills over the course of his stay, but none so bad that he'd had to resort to hunting down lizards to keep functioning – then grabbed his crutch and carefully made his way out of his home, trying to sneak, in case they were bandits or something. 

As luck would have it, they _weren't_ bandits. In fact, Ed took one look at the small field of golden blond hair – he'd never seen that particular shade outside his own family – and stopped to _stare_.

It only took a minute for someone to spot Ed, and then he found himself faced with an unfamiliar language and a veritable _sea_ of impossibly golden eyes. He shook his head, swallowed against the block in his throat, and managed a rusty, "I don't understand." 

There was some uncertain whispering among the people – hells, _his_ people; he'd never have thought to see another person outside his brother with his colouring, and yet, here stood at least two dozen – before one young man, who looked to be maybe five years older than Ed, stepped forward and said, "It is Amestrisan you have words?" 

Ed was a bit thrown by the mangled sentence, but he nodded as soon as he'd sorted out what the other meant. "Yeah. Yes. Amestrisan." 

The one who had spoken to him spoke briefly with some of the older men around him for a moment, then stepped closer to Ed and touched a hand to his own chest, giving a short, polite little bow as he said, "Behnam, son of Mas'ud and Shokufeh." Then he straightened and pointed at Ed, expression expectant. 

Ed swallowed and replied, "I'm Ed, son of Trisha Elric and Van Hohenheim." 

The watching crowd burst into sound at his father's name, and Ed couldn't quite keep from taking a step back. 

Behnam shot him a quick apologetic look, then turned to say something into the crowd. An older man and woman – both with hair going white – quickly called out something in their language, and the crowd silenced at the sound of their voices. They both stepped forward to join Behnam, and he looked a little uncertain as he looked back at Ed again. "Mahdi," he said of the man, and, "Sanaz," of the woman, then added, "Masters?" 

Ed frowned at that, uncertain. "Chiefs? Or leaders?" he guessed, because they didn't _look_ like a band of servants watching over two people. 

Behnam broke out into a smile, though, and he nodded. "Leaders!" He rattled something off in his own language, and the woman – Sanaz – responded, mentioning Hohenheim's name. Behnam nodded again, then turned back to Ed. "Van Hohenheim you father?" 

Ed nodded. "Yes. He died a little over a year ago; I'm trying to translate some of his journals." 

Behnam shook his head, frowning. "Too many. Words only some." He held up his finger and thumb to show the sort of 'very little' sign than Ed had seen many times in Amestris. 

He frowned for a moment, trying to think how to explain, then rebalanced against his crutch and held up a finger. "Wait," he said, and Behnam nodded, so he went to collect one of Hohenheim's journals. When he brought it back to Behnam and the two leaders, he held it out, saying, "Hohenheim's. I can't read it. Uhm... No words?" 

It was the man – Mahdi – who took the journal, while Behnam spoke in their language. He opened it and flipped through a couple pages, then closed it with a frown and replied to Behnam. 

Behnam nodded and accepted the journal when Mahdi held it out to him, then turned back to Ed and said, "You have need our words." 

"Yes," Ed agreed. 

Behnam pointed a finger between the two of them a few times, saying, "Trade words?" 

Ed couldn't quite stop a relieved laugh, and he shot Behnam a grateful smile as he agreed, "I'd like that very much." 

Behnam grinned back, as wide and excited as Ed had ever seen, and he suspected he wasn't the only one who desperately wanted a teacher for another language. 

-0-

Between drawing pictures in the sand, and Behnam's broken Amestrisan, Ed learnt the group were desert nomads, and they always spent the weeks around both the winter and summer solstices in the ruins. Ed was invited to join them for their celebrations, which he gladly accepted, though he did beg off the first night to go hunt what lizards he could, grimacing as he drank their blood, but it was better than either refusing, or throwing up whatever food they shared with him. 

Over the course of the two weeks the tribe stayed in the ruins, Ed managed to pick up enough of their language – Xerxesian, Behnam had told him when he'd asked, answering a number of other questions Ed hadn't quite figured out how to ask – to be able to have an extremely basic conversation with anyone in the camp. Which was a relief, yet also infuriating, because he felt like he should know _more_ than that, should be able to finally start translating Hohenheim's journals, even though learning their speech was nothing at all like learning their alphabet. (Especially since, Behnam warned him when Ed asked at one point, their alphabet didn't exactly match up with Amestris'.) 

Some days, Ed really hated his father. 

When it came time for the tribe to move out, Behnam came to him with Sanaz and – with some minor translation hiccups – she asked if he wanted to come with them. 

Ed stared down at his lap for a moment, debating. On one hand, he _desperately_ needed the continued teaching to be able to read Hohenheim's journals. On the other hand, he was a potential danger, should he get too badly hurt. 

He sighed and shook his head at himself, because the choice wasn't hard; Al would always be more important, and he needed Xerxesian to free his brother. **"I am...grateful,"** Ed said in his broken Xerxesian, nodding. **"Yes."**

Sanaz offered him a quick smile, then said something to Behnam that was a little too quick for Ed to follow, before leaving them in Ed's ruined home. 

"Sanaz say, you have coup– No. One day to prepare. Leave with second sun." 

So, in other words, Ed had about thirty-six hours to pack his things and find some more reptiles to, hopefully, tide him over for a few days. 

He smiled and nodded in response, showing he understood, and Behnam smiled before leaving Ed to his packing. 

Ed sighed as he looked around his home for the past couple months; he'd miss it. 

\--1808--

Hiding his curse turned out to be remarkably easy when travelling with a large group, both because they were too big for the handful of bandits that made their homes in the desert to make a go at, and Ed was ordered to ride in a cart while they were moving, on account of his disability. Which, well, he was long resigned to getting around on his peg leg and crutch, but it was nice to not have to walk on it all the time. Even better, he could practise their language with whomever was close enough to chat with, without worrying about losing his breath trying to keep up with their easier steps. 

The tribe travelled south after the winter solstice, skirting close to Aerugo's border and doing some trade with the villages there. They ended at the coast, where they spent the two weeks around the spring equinox, and Ed got his first taste of a beach, which proved to be quite the experience. 

While at the beach, he'd also started to learn the Xerxesian alphabet, since it had been a little too bumpy to try it on the road, and everyone else was usually too tired once they'd struck camp for the night to help him any. He didn't start working on any of Hohenheim's journals then, however, far too busy just trying to learn the difference between the curling letters. 

On their way back up toward the Xerxes ruins, they skirted the Xingan border, again doing trade with villages along their route. According to Behnam, who Ed had asked, after the summer solstice, they'd head up north, spending the autumn equinox at a small campground they had staked out just over the border from Drachma, and within about an hour's walk of a few smaller villages. 

Behnam also explained that they'd sometimes pick up others interested in travel, who would then stay with them for a season or a year, rather like Ed was doing. Xingan was something of a second language for most of the Xerxesians, and a number also understood Aerugonian or Drachman, for use in trading, or because a native speaker had travelled with them for a while. But they'd never had anything really to do with Amestris, which was why only Behnam had known any Amestrisan. (He'd apparently picked it up from an Aerugonian who'd travelled with the tribe for a season.) 

It was an interesting sort of life, Ed thought. Far more structured than his own travels over the past almost-decade had been, which felt at once both constraining and freeing. 

When they returned to Xerxes for the summer solstice, Ed finally started on his father's journals. It was slow going, especially as his first choice seemed to be more about alchemical theories which, while certainly interesting, didn't really help Ed on his quest. They did, however, serve as an interesting talking point with the Xerxesian tribe; none of them were alchemists, though he was told that all of their ancestors had had the ability, meaning they almost certainly did as well. 

When Ed asked why they didn't practise the art, Banu – the eldest of the tribe's leaders' children, and the closest they had to an historian – explained, **"You know Xerxes was destroyed in a single night?"**

Ed nodded. **"So the tale goes."**

She smiled. **"The last records we have said it was to be a day of celebrations, for the king had discovered a way to make himself immortal through alchemy."**

Ed scoffed, because he knew something of immortality. **"That was a bad life choice,"** he commented. 

**"So it was,"** Banu agreed, her smile sad. **"We have no explanation for how it happened, only that those who had been travelling returned to find naught but corpses on the streets, fallen in place as though suddenly struck with death."**

Ed frowned at that, rubbing at his chin. **"Alchemy can do that?"**

**"So it seems."** Banu sighed. **"It's in memory of our people and the harm alchemy can do, that we don't practise it."**

Ed swallowed and rubbed his fingers together, staring down at his hand, at the chalk he could almost see there, though it had been a couple months since he'd actually _used_ any alchemy; it simply hadn't been necessary while moving with the tribe. **"Should I stop?"**

Banu touched his shoulder, and he looked up to find her smiling at him, a little sad, but honest. **"That's your choice, in the end. For all that you share our blood, you also share the blood of Amestris, and their history is a different one. We do not begrudge you the gift you've studied. And, too..."** She trailed off for a moment and glanced around them, as though checking there wasn't anyone near enough to overhear. **"I think,"** she continued quietly, **"that there is sense in learning alchemy, if only to guard against it. I think, sometimes, that we fear alchemy so much for what it _has_ done, we don't acknowledge what it _may yet_ do."**

Ed considered that for a moment, could see the sense in learning at least enough alchemy to know when it was about to put you in danger. **"It sounds like, then,"** he said, **"you could use a teacher."**

So Ed had started to split his time between translating Hohenheim's journals and helping Behnam with Amestrisan a bit – he hadn't been nearly as quick a study as Ed, but he'd also only had Ed to practise with, while Ed could find others to talk to – and teaching Banu and her niece, Minoo – who was training to take on Banu's mantle as historian – about alchemy. 

It kept him busy on the long days of travel and the the long nights – when the tribe slept and Ed couldn't for fear of nightmares – for which he was grateful. And he hated himself, some days, because finding the information he needed to free Al had turned into less of a priority. But, then, he also thought his brother would rather he have good relations with the Xerxesians, so they would be more likely to welcome Al in as family once all was said and done. 

When they returned to Xerxes for the winter solstice, marking a year since Ed had joined the nomads, he pulled Banu aside and said, **"When I first introduced myself, Hohenheim's name got a big reaction."**

Banu nodded and motioned that they should both sit. **"You've told me of your Xerxesian who survived the tragedy and taught Amestris alchemy."**

Ed frowned and nodded, leaning forward a bit and wrapping his arm around his right leg. **"Sure. The Philosopher of the East."**

**"They also have stories of a similar man in Xing, and they call him the Philosopher of the West."**

Ed frowned at that. **"Two men survived?"** he guessed. 

**"So it seems,"** Banu agreed, her expression troubled. **"I don't know if his name survives in Xing, any longer, but our histories have that the Philosopher of the West's name was Van Hohenheim."**

Ed's breath caught and he felt his eyes going wide as connections started to form: 

The Xerxesian king had been looking for a way to obtain immortality. 

Hohenheim had, by many reports, been immortal. At least to a point. 

Ed's own immortality required a sort of life to keep going: Human blood. (Animal blood worked in the short term, but human blood seemed to be the only thing that could cure his hunger.) 

The _entire city_ of Xerxes had died in one night, falling where they'd been standing, as though someone had simply ripped their souls out of their bodies. (Like what had happened to Al when his time in the armour had been up.) 

So it followed, that Van Hohenheim had achieved immortality by killing all of the people of Xerxes. 

**"I think I am going to be sick,"** Ed whispered, rubbing at his mouth and trying to ignore the ghost-taste of blood on his tongue. 

Banu cleared her throat. **"I'm sure it's simply a name handed down through the centuries. I mean, it's been _three hundred years_ ; if anyone would have gained immortality that night, it would have been King Xerxes."**

Ed forced a smile that ached and agreed, **"Immortality is probably impossible, anyway, or every alchemist would be doing it."**

**"Exactly!"** Banu agreed, and they turned to lighter topics, like her filling Ed in on the parts of the celebrations he'd missed out on last year because of the language barrier. 

That night, though, after the camp had turned in for the night, Ed crept out of range of the night watch as sneakily as he could. Once alone, he looked up at the stars and snarled, "You _bastard_. They were your _people_! How could you do that to them?! How the hell could you sacrifice _that many_ people? And for what?! _Immortality_?" He scoffed and looked down at his own hand, could almost see the shine of blood dripping off the ends of his fingers. "I hope it was worth it," he added quietly, feeling suddenly tired. Too old, too worn, too broken. 

He laughed, then, and the sound cracked and broke against the stone around him. " _Hells_ , I'm exactly like him, aren't I?" That was...disheartening. 

Well, at least Ed had one thing up on his father: He hadn't killed an entire country for immortality. 

\--February-March 1809--

En route to the coast again, Ed finally cracked open the journal that explained the downfall of Xerxes from Hohenheim's perspective: 

His father had been born a slave, which had been disturbing to read, while also resulting in a surge of vindictive pleasure for Ed; after what his father had done, it seemed a fitting start for him. 

His master, an accomplished alchemist and advisor to King Xerxes, had used his blood one day to create an intelligence, which he kept in a glass flask. The intelligence – which Hohenheim referred to as 'the Dwarf in the Flask, Homunculus', which was both intriguing and disturbing, because Ed had never heard of a successful attempt at creating a homunculus before – was the one to give Hohenheim his name, as well as teach him to read and write and do arithmetic. He'd also taught Hohenheim alchemy, and that last had bought Hohenheim his freedom. 

According to Hohenheim, it was the Dwarf in the Flask to whom King Xerxes had turned when he'd wanted to become immortal. At the Dwarf in the Flask's direction, he'd had a large circle dug, then entire settlements wiped out at strategic points around the circle, soaking the land with blood. 

Ed'd had to stop for a couple days after reading that, because he knew all too well, any more, the power of blood, and he didn't need it spelt out to understand that an array was being created. An array that would steal the souls from an entire country's population overnight. 

And so it turned out to be, but it hadn't been Hohenheim with aspirations toward immortality, as Ed had once assumed. Rather, it had been the Dwarf in the Flask, who had also created a body for himself in Hohenheim's image. 

Hohenheim had fled to the east, and been taken in by Xingans. In return for their kindness, he'd stayed and revolutionised their alchemy, until it became all too obvious he wasn't ageing. Then he'd gone travelling. 

He'd known about the Xerxesian nomads, apparently, and had written this chronicle of events specifically to one day pass on to them, so they could understand the truth of their own history. Except he'd always been too afraid to approach them, so he'd kept his distance and just kept writing, because it had become familiar. 

In time, during his travels, he'd heard about Amestris' Philosopher of the West, and had asked around to learn more about him, afraid it was the Dwarf in the Flask – a fear Ed had begun to share, sickened by how much he'd once so loved hearing the stories of the being. 

In one of the villages he'd snooped around at, he'd met Ed's mum, and she'd doggedly followed him through three more villages, until he'd agreed to a single date, which had turned into–

Ed skipped a lot of that, making a face the whole while. 

When he got to the part about his own birth, though, he had to shove the book back in his bag and ignore it for a few days, because he–

_Fuck_. Who knew believing yourself a monster – believing your sins would wear off on anyone too innocent that you accidentally touched – was genetic? 

He did eventually make himself go back to the journal, reminding himself this was for _Al_ , and it still hurt, a bit, because Hohenheim spared himself no kindness in describing his failures as a father: Too terrified to touch Ed, too afraid he'd drop and break him when Mum hadn't given him a choice, in turns terrified and awed when Ed's eyes had turned from blue to Xerxesian-gold, how desperately he'd wanted to be a _good father_ , because Ed-the-baby had looked at him with so much _trust_. And when Ed-the-baby's first word was 'dada', Hohenheim had started wondering about ways to become mortal. 

And that...that _hurt_. That _Ed_ had been the one who, all unknowing, had given his father the push to leave and, eventually, commit suicide in the name of protecting others. 

At least it hadn't been right away, he supposed, because Hohenheim went on to write about struggling the same way with Al, and stepping in a couple times because Ed had apparently been a massive brat. (He could almost hear Al's sarcastic, 'What a _surprise_ , Brother.') 

But he _had_ left, and the two pages of regrets about not being able to say goodbye, about crying so much he'd ended up becoming dehydrated, made Ed want to punch something. Hohenheim, probably, if only because he'd been holding on to the memory of that cold back for so long, used it to stay angry through the loneliest nights, and to discover his father hadn't been giving him the cold shoulder, but suffering from a broken heart, was just... 

Ed'd had to put the journal away again for a while, vacillating between heartbreak and rage, because he _didn't need_ to feel bad for his father. He'd wanted to stay angry at him for forever, because then maybe he could bear the weight of whatever duty the man had left unfinished. 

After a couple of days, Banu traded with her niece, who Ed had been riding in the cart with, and asked, **"You've had such a storm cloud over your head these past few days, I keep expecting a sandstorm to chase us the rest of the way to the coast."**

Ed scoffed, because that was _ridiculous_ and not at all how nature worked. 

Banu sighed and reached over to rap a knuckle against his forehead. **"It'll never get better if you hold it inside to fester."**

**"Nothing says letting it out will help, either,"** Ed retorted. 

Banu shot him an unimpressed look. 

Ed sighed and drooped back against the wagon bench a bit. **"I have always thought Hohenheim hated us, my brother and me. All I can remember of him is him turning his back on us and leaving. But, in his journal..."**

**"He loved you?"** Banu guessed. 

Ed hunched down in his seat a bit and nodded. **"Turned his back so we would not know he was crying. He did not want to leave, I guess."**

**"I've never been a parent,"** Banu offered, **"but I have watched enough others lose children to this life, either because the desert killed them, or they wished to settle down in stillness, and the parents always show such heartbreak, it hurts to watch; just because he was the one to do the leaving, doesn't make it any less true that it would hurt."**

Ed considered that for a moment, before letting out an irritated huff and muttering, **"I do not _want_ to forgive him."**

**"So don't,"** Banu returned, like it was the simplest thing ever. **"Just because you know _why_ someone acted, doesn't mean you need to forgive them for the action itself."**

Oh. That...actually made sense. Just because Hohenheim had hurt to leave, didn't mean that Ed had to forgive him for leaving in the first place. And Hohenheim claiming that Ed, himself, had been the inspiration behind his leaving to find a way to die, didn't in any way absolve him of the choice to put his own mortality before raising his sons. 

**"Thank you,"** he said quietly. 

Banu smiled and patted his leg. **"Just helping with the storm cloud problem."**

Ed snorted and twisted to get his bag out of the back, determined to find the duty his father had left unfinished before he gave up reading the bloody thing again. 

Which, well, that turned out to be a bit of a failure, because the journal ended before Hohenheim made mention of any duties or quests he might have been on. Other than, you know, trying to find a way to use up the souls inside of himself and die. And avoiding any high-profile notice, in case the Dwarf in the Flask was looking for him; the last thing he'd wanted was to chance the other finding out he'd made a family and then try using them against him. 

Disgusted, Ed tossed the journal back into his bag and pulled out another one of Hohenheim's alchemy journals, this one focussing on Xingan alchemy, which was plenty intriguing enough to make him forget all about the still-unknown duty. 

\--September 1809--

Despite his disability, Ed did his best to pull his own weight whenever possible. He and the tribe leaders, Mahdi and Sanaz, had butted heads more than a couple of times, in the beginning, about how much he would be allowed to do – the language barrier hadn't helped, especially since Ed had a bad habit of losing his temper when someone suggested he was too small or too young to do something – but they'd eventually settled on a handful of tasks that the two leaders felt okay letting Ed do, and he tried not to get too annoyed by having people around who actually _worried about his safety_.

One of the tasks he was allowed to help out with, was gathering materials or foraging for food whenever they stopped for more than a night – so, holidays and trading stops. It was kind of tedious work, especially when their surroundings were more desert than woods, but it gave him something to do to stretch his legs a bit, and he felt a little better about them sharing their food and travelling accommodations with him. 

Gathering wood and wild food while they were stopped in the mountains for the autumn equinox was actually quite a bit more challenging than anywhere else, for Ed, because of his crappy balance. He'd actually considered taking the disabled track and sitting those expeditions out, but his sense of equivalence wouldn't let him, so he just watched his step and moved as slowly as he could, ignoring the jeering from the children who were ordered out because the adults were tired of them being under foot. 

It was one such trip, Ed keeping a sharp eye out for berries within easy reach for him, while also trying to watch his steps, and lagging behind, when he heard a bear roaring ahead of him, in the general direction that the younger members of the tribe had wandered off in five or ten minutes before. 

Ed had overheard plenty of lectures from the older members of the tribe on the dangers of various animals they chanced coming across, so he expected the kids knew how to handle a bear, assuming they were even close enough to it for it to be a concern, but _still_. It was a _bear_ , and it made him nervous to think of the tribe's children walking the woods on their own with one so close.

Ed grimaced a bit as he debated, but then he heard a second roar, followed by a human scream, and he quickly unhooked his gathering basket from his crutch, leaving it to spill across the ground as he moved as quickly as he could in the direction of the sounds. 

The twins, Ghoncheh and Zhaleh, passed him before he made it far, both of their eyes wide and terrified. "Ed!" Zhaleh called, slowing as they came within speaking range, while her sister kept running. 

**"Get back to camp!"** Ed ordered in return, and she didn't argue, just pelted past him, and he hoped at least one of them had sense enough to grab a couple of the more capable members of the tribe; immortal or no, Ed wasn't certain even _he_ could handle an enraged bear, and he wasn't much interested in letting the Xerxesians know about his curse, anyway. 

He found the bear before the other children, raging at where one tree had fallen between two trees that were close enough together to catch it with lower branches and form a small shelter. Too small for the bear, who was probably about twice as tall as Ed, but just about the right size for the other three children, the gold of their eyes and hair just bright enough to be seen despite the shadows. 

That said, it looked rather like the bear wouldn't take too long to either make itself an opening, or drop the fallen tree on the heads of the children, and Ed spotted a few bright red splatters of blood, including one inside the entrance of their shelter – because spotting blood was freakishly easy for him, any more – but he couldn't see any wounds on the bear. Not that he could see the whole bear, but _still_.

They desperately needed a distraction so they could get back to camp, and Ed had no idea when reinforcements would come, which meant it was up to him. At least suicidal life choices were a tradition of his? 

Ed let out a whistle and threw his crutch at the bear, since it would only get in his way while trying to lead it away from the children. **"Oiy! Easy prey, right here!"**

**"Ed, _no_!"** the eldest of the three, Shahin, called. 

It was too late, though, because the bear was already turning, snarling in Ed's direction. 

[Ed just flashed his best troublemaker's smile](http://arantxamagnelli.tumblr.com/post/152672151417/second-piece-for-batsutousais-fic-spirits-fall), then turned and ran as best he could into the trees, going at an angle to the camp, so the others could make it back safely, but reinforcements shouldn't be too long in coming. 

Someone shouted after him, but their voice was lost under the sounds of the bear following him, catching up way too quickly for Ed's comfort. But, then, running away had never been part of his repertoire, so he grabbed for a branch that was going mostly parallel to him as he passed it, raising his legs off the ground as much as he could and letting his remaining momentum swing him around the tree's trunk. 

The bear raced past him as Ed hit the dirt, and he didn't give himself time to feel the shock to his bones, just started sketching an array in the dirt with his finger, then quickly activated it and used the resulting spear to help himself stand. 

He just barely got the spear up to block the bear's first swipe, lost the tip to the follow-up swipe, and grimaced and ducked forward, jamming the pole into the bear's belly. 

The bear roared, took another swipe at Ed and connected with the side of his head. 

Pain exploded in Ed's head, and he stumbled back a step, caught himself with his broken spear, and looked up through his one good eye as he licked the blood off his lips. "Ow," he complained flatly, the pain already starting to fade as his curse kicked in. 

The bear snarled in response and took another swipe at him, which Ed ducked, blinking a bit as vision returned to his other eye. (That would never _not_ be weird.) 

The bear managed to catch him against the scarred remains of his right shoulder with its next swipe, and Ed lost his balance and tumbled down the slight incline a bit, losing his pole in the process. 

He hurriedly drew another array and summoned a second spear as soon as he stopped his tumble, but ended up having to cut the transmutation short to dodge another swipe. Still, he had a new spear, even if it was a little short, so he ducked low and ran at the bear, sharp stone point forward, and connected solidly with the bear's belly, grimacing as claws raked against his back. 

He shoved down on the end of the spear, the bear roaring above him, pushing it down into the dirt hard enough to get stuck, then tried to roll back out of the way. He tripped a bit, ended up tumbling backward instead, but he still managed to get out of range of the bear's claws, so whatever. 

He stopped to breathe for a moment, watching as the bear raged between wanting to kill him, and the fact that the spear in its belly was keeping it from going forward. 

Just as he was reaching down to draw another array, summon up a weapon more suited for killing a bear, it let out another roar for no discernible reason, then slumped forward over Ed's spear. A couple of spears were sticking out of its back, far more permanent affairs than the desperate attempts Ed had been transmuting. 

He let his shoulders slump with relief and reached up to run his hand over his face, only to touch slightly tacky blood and freeze. 

_Shit_. How the hell was he supposed to explain not being wounded? And how much had he lost? Enough that the hunger was starting to get distracting, now the adrenaline was wearing off. 

"Ed?" Akbar, Shahin's father, called. Not quite panicked, like he maybe hadn't caught sight of Ed yet. 

He tried to scramble to his feet, get away before anyone saw him, but then Akbar rounded the dead bear, and Ed saw his eyes go wide before he shouted, "Ed!" Panicked, _afraid_.

**"Stay away!"** Ed insisted, finally managed to get his peg leg under him and shoved with his left leg so he could stand. 

A couple of other men who usually went out with the hunting party rounded the bear, and Ed could see shock, then concern flash across their faces, even as Akbar held up his hands. **"We need to get your wounds looked at, Ed. No one here's going to hurt you; the bear's dead."**

Ed shook his head, drawing a complete blank on any arguments that would help, and turned to run further into the trees; he needed to hunt down some animals, drink enough that he could think again, come up with some sort of solution to this. 

Something let out a cracking noise, almost seeming to come from _beneath_ him, and Ed had just about enough time to be confused, before his peg leg gave out under him and he tumbled to the ground. The too-familiar taste of blood bloomed across his tongue, and he suspected he'd cut his tongue or the inside of his lip on his lengthened canines. 

He twisted and looked back at his peg leg, couldn't keep in a hopeless moan when he saw it was snapped in half; the bear had probably swiped it at one point, since he'd never had it break on him because of running before. 

"Ed," Akbar said again, approaching slowly, **"it's okay."**

Ed's eyes caught on Akbar's throat, the spot where he knew a vein pulsed just under the skin, and bared his teeth as much at himself, as he did in a warning for Akbar to _get away_.

Akbar froze, his eyes going wide with what looked like fear, and someone let out a curse, while someone else breathed, " _Daeva_ ," which was the Xerxesian word for creatures very like the demons found in most of the Amestrisan religions Ed knew of. 

Ed took his chance and fled, moving in an ungainly cross between crawling and limping, but it was the best he could do with his broken peg leg, and he _needed_ to get away, to protect the Xerxesians from himself. 

-0-

Once his hunger was sated enough that Ed could think straight again, he sat down and cursed himself, because that had turned into such a complete and utter screw-up on his part. At least he'd managed to keep from hurting anyone – the day's single saving grace – and he recognised that he hadn't had a lot of options when it came to saving the children from the bear, but _still_.

He was going to have to leave the Xerxesians. Go back to travelling on his own, having to watch for bandits on the road, killing whatever poor fool decided to try killing him for his rather useless possessions. 

Well, he could leave Hohenheim's one journal with them, the one he'd always meant to give them. He very much doubted that was his father's forgotten duty, but at least then the Xerxesians would understand a bit better what had really happened to the home of their ancestors; they were owed that much, at least, for taking Ed in for almost two years. 

He'd have to wait until dark, sneak back into the camp to collect his things when most of them were abed. He was plenty familiar with the habits of the night watch, as rarely as he chanced more than a brief nap, for fear of nightmares, so it shouldn't be too hard for him to sneak in and out again. And if they really _did_ think he'd been... What? Possessed by a demon? 

Whatever. 

At any rate, it was extremely unlikely that they would expect him to return for his things. With luck, they wouldn't have moved them out of his tent yet, but, if they had, Ed was familiar enough with the camp, he knew where his things were most likely to end up, so it still wouldn't be hard to get everything and get out with no one the wiser. 

As for where he would go... 

Well, he could travel in Drachma for a bit, he supposed. He only knew a handful of their language, but it wasn't like he _needed_ to go into towns or speak with people, or anything, since he hardly needed any of the amenities most travellers required – food, drink, a bed. Eventually make his way back to Amestris, maybe head back to the burned remains of his and Al's house, see if he couldn't somehow find answers about his supposed 'duty' there. 

He would manage, as always, would survive alone, once again. The Xerxesian tribe was far better without the danger he was hanging over their heads, anyway, and it was pretty clear he wasn't going to find the solution to his and Al's curse here, so he might as well move on. 

It was for the best. For all of them. 

Ed covered his face with his hand and tried to pretend the wetness on his cheeks was just blood. 

-0-

As Ed had expected, it hadn't been hard to slip into the camp unnoticed, and since his little one-person tent was still up, he went there first. 

It didn't look like any of his things had been touched, and Ed couldn't quite silence a relieved breath, because he hadn't really been looking forward to hunting his few belongings down. Most of it was still packed, even, because he'd got in the habit long before joining the tribe, of only unpacking what he _absolutely_ needed when he stopped for the night. 

He quickly packed up the last of his things, then sat down on the floor with a piece of blank paper ripped out of one of Hohenheim's journals, and the journal explaining the man's history, intent on writing at least _some_ sort of note, though he wasn't really certain what to say. 

(He understood why Hohenheim had always avoided this tribe, honestly; a part of him so desperately wanted to stay with them, despite everything.) 

He wrote, **_'I'm sorry.'_** But then frowned, because that wasn't really a good way to start a letter, was it? So he moved his pencil to cross it out, before stopping himself, because maybe it wasn't a _good_ way to start a letter, but it was the most important part. Because he _was_ sorry. Sorry he had to leave, that they'd found out at all, that he'd maybe scared some of them, that he'd... 

Ed closed his eyes and swallowed, forced a smile onto his face, because then he could convince himself it hurt less: 

He was sorry he'd made any of them care for a monster. 

**"And here I thought,"** Behnam's voice said from behind Ed, **"that it's against a daeva's nature to apologise."**

Ed froze, couldn't think anything other than, 'Oh, _fuck_.'

A pair of legs moved around him, stopping in front of him and resolving themselves into Behnam as the man crouched down in front of him. **"Hello, Ed."**

Ed swallowed and let his forced smile fall. "Behnam," he whispered, at a loss for anything constructive to say. 

Behnam considered him for a silent moment, then glanced toward where Ed's packed bag was so innocently sitting. **"Didn't think it was in their nature to run away, either. More about hurting people, the daevas."**

**"I'm not–!"** Ed started before stopping himself and shaking his head, looking down at the letter he'd been in the process of writing. **"I _told_ you: Daevas don't _exist_. They're just excuses people bandy about to excuse their actions when they do something horrible."** Because they _had_ discussed religion at one point, when Ed'd had to ask for translations of some of the terms the others used, and Behnam had had to resort to stories so Ed could equate the words to the closest Amestrisan concept. 

**"Ah,"** Behnam murmured, a faint hint of amusement in his voice, **"there's the Ed I know so well. And, look, no fangs."** He looked past Ed, toward the entrance to his tent. 

Swallowing in trepidation, Ed twisted to look over his shoulder, and found the two clan leaders – Sanaz and Mahdi – standing just inside his tent. The flap was being held open by someone outside, and Ed was near certain he saw the point of one of the hunting party's spears in the small space between the two elders. He swallowed again, struggling with a wretched lump in his throat, and quietly said, **"If you've come to scare me off, there's no need; I only came for my things."**

Sanaz frowned and folded her hands together in front of herself, clearly disapproving of _some_ part of what Ed'd said, but it was Mahdi who replied, **"How cruel do you think us, that we would scare off one of our own without just cause?"**

Ed couldn't hold back a laugh, and it broke from his throat like too many pieces of sharp-edged glass, shattering to the ground between them. **" 'Just cause'?"** Ed repeated, couldn't stop from spitting the words, hated that his only defence, once again, was an offence. **"And what is that, I wonder? It differs so much from village to village."**

**"We are not _Amestrisan_ ,"** Mahdi snapped back, his disgust for the country of Ed's childhood and her people all too obvious in the way he said the word. **"We do not judge without the facts."**

Ed's face twisted with a parody of a smile without his say-so. **"Oh, but you _have_ the facts, do you not? I am a _cripple_ who took on and survived a bear twice my size. Bit covered in blood, but not a scratch on me. And then, right! _Fangs_."**

**"I see no fangs,"** Mahdi shot back without missing a beat. 

Ed curled his lips up in a snarl, but he had no control over when his canines lengthened, so the effect was rather diminished. 

Sanaz placed a hand on Mahdi's arm when he opened his mouth to reply, and it snapped shut with an audible 'click' of teeth hitting together. Then Sanaz stepped forward and slightly to the side, crouching down where Ed didn't have to twist quite so awkwardly to face her. **"You're afraid,"** she said quietly, and Ed couldn't keep from flinching back slightly, hated that that confirmed her statement. "That is what Akbar told us, that you were afraid, and I see it again, now, that you are afraid to stay. You _want_ us to curse you? To cast you out?"

Ed swallowed, had to look away from the concern and caring he saw in her eyes. 

**"There are those facts, yes, that are full of so much fear, because there has always been something none of us can understand about you. Some dark secret that always makes you smile so wretched a smile when someone asks how you lost your limbs, and yet you never once have said. Or that you're so often up with a candle in your tent all night, and yet never look a bit tired. Or how you sometimes forget to eat or drink, and don't seem to notice the lack, even in the terrible heat of the desert.**

**"But there is, also,"** Sanaz continued, **"those facts of goodness, which so outnumber our questions. Your insistence that you must be given a task to help, to do your part. That you have been so willing to teach your native language, to any who ask about it. That you have shared alchemy with Banu and Minoo and any other with interest, always giving them warnings, before teaching them something new, as though you fear most for their safety. And, this afternoon, that you saved Shahin, Azar, and Pari, without fear for what might become you."**

A hand brushed gently against Ed's cheek, and he turned back to meet Sanaz's gaze, so impossibly _kind_. **"Will you explain to me, please, why you are so certain we should cast you out?"**

Ed wanted to say no, to just _run away_ , because he didn't want to see that kindness turned away from him. But...didn't he owe them this much? Didn't they have the right to know what sort of monster they'd been sheltering for the past twenty months? 

He tightened his hand around his pencil and looked down at the journal and the paper in his lap – couldn't face her or Behnam, sitting in front of him – as he admitted, **"I'm cursed. Immortality. Except there's a price: Any blood I lose, I have to replace, by drinking it from another living being. And I can't–"** His voice caught and he squeezed his eyes shut, forced himself to take a deep breath and continue, **"I can't control myself, when I'm really low. I just...attack. I'm not _safe_."**

Ed fell quiet, felt rather like he was awaiting a blow, knew he'd deserve it, after admitting he'd been putting them in danger for over a year. 

Except, it wasn't a blow that came. Instead, arms came around him, and he found himself being hugged tight as Sanaz whispered, **"Ed, my child,"** in such a _broken_ voice. 

There was something trapped in Ed's mouth, a sound clamouring to be set free, and he tried to bite it back, but it was stopping him from breathing. He parted his lips just enough to gasp in air, but the sound slipped out in the process, forming into a sob that made his eyes feel far too wet, and he knew, if he opened them, that either tears would start to fall, or this would turn out to be the absolute cruellest dream his subconscious had yet devised. So he kept them squeezed tight, let go of his pencil and reached up to grab Sanaz's arm, wasn't sure if he was checking to see it was real, or just holding on because he couldn't–

He was a monster. Cursed to murder without any control, and someone was _hugging him_. Someone who _knew_ he was a monster. Who didn't–

Ed stiffened, couldn't stop his eyes from opening wide as it occurred to him: _Al had known._ Two years ago, he'd already known everything Ed had done, and he'd still hugged him. Had stood there, _holding on to Ed_ , even though he'd been shaking with the effort. He didn't–

Al hadn't hated him. Had even _apologised_ because Ed was being forced to stain his hand, while Al could only watch. 'Safe', he'd said, because no one could touch him, in that place, while Ed–

Ed died, over and over again. It had never mattered to Al that Ed'd been forced to kill, had it? He'd only cared that Ed – just like before, when Al'd been in the armour, freaking out over every little wound Ed got, because Al _couldn't bleed any more_ – was being hurt. Again and again and again. And there was _nothing Al could do_.

Fuck, he was an _idiot_ , wasn't he? 

"You are, a bit," Behnam said in Amestrisan, which caught Ed's attention mostly because he only rarely heard it. When he shot the man what he hoped was a confused frown – he felt off-kilter, wasn't completely certain he trusted his facial expressions, especially since his face was _wet_ because his eyes _hadn't stayed closed_ , the traitors – Behnam said, "An idiot." 

'An idi–'

Oh. Shit. He hadn't meant to say that out loud. 

**"Translation,"** Mahdi said flatly, his voice far closer than the entrance to Ed's tent. 

Ed twisted to look, being careful not to dislodge the arm Sanaz still had around his shoulders, and found Mahdi standing just a little behind him on the opposite side from his wife. 

**"Ed said he's an idiot,"** Behnam offered, and Ed couldn't stop a grimace, reached up to wipe at his face in hopes it would hide the expression. Whether it worked or not, he couldn't say, but Behnam did add, **"I don't think you intended to let that slip out, however."**

Ed couldn't quite stop a snort, and figured that was answer enough. 

**"You rather _are_ a fool, to think we would cast you out,"** Sanaz commented. 

Ed turned to stare at her. **"What's _that_ supposed to mean? It's obvious why I can't continue to stay here; I'm a danger to everyone! And do _not_ start citing that I led the bear away!"** he added as she opened her mouth, didn't quite care that he was trampling right over one of the unspoken rules of the tribe. **"What I do when I'm thinking straight doesn't change the fact that I can't control myself sometimes!"**

He tried to shrug her arm off, but her grip tightened around his shoulder enough to make it clear she wouldn't be dissuaded, even as she, quite calmly, replied, **"I don't think that's true."**

Ed opened his mouth to tell her...he wasn't actually certain _what_ his response was going to be, but it would almost certainly be idiotically rude, so it really was for the best that Mahdi snapped, **"You will be _quiet_ , Ed."**

Ed's mouth snapped shut and he scowled down at his lap. 

Sanaz sighed and shook him a little bit. **"We have heard the story from the others, and it didn't sound as though you had no control. Rather, that you attempted first to warn them away, then scare them away. And when neither worked, you were the one to flee, despite a broken leg."** Her free hand reached down, into Ed view, and tapped a finger against the top of his peg leg, which was extended diagonally out in front of him, the closest he could get it to a cross-legged position. 

Ed frowned, thinking back to that moment out in the woods. He'd definitely felt starved for blood, but he couldn't say exactly _how_ starved. Enough that he'd struggled to come up with responses to the hunting party, and he'd messed up the array to repair his leg at least four times. 

He didn't really suffer the worst level of starvation – unable to control himself as he ripped out the throat of the person nearest him – unless he was on the road and someone killed him. Or when he'd just come back from that other world, when he'd gone after that squirrel. He didn't really know enough to say how close he'd been that afternoon. 

But, when he thought about it – put aside the familiar horror, the self-hatred – honestly... Fighting that bear, as many hits as he'd taken – the back and right side of his shirt had been nearly soaked through with blood, not to mention the mess his hair had been – he'd lost at _least_ as much blood as having his throat slit on the road, and yet... 

What was the difference? What decided if he went mad with hunger and attacked the nearest living thing? 

Did he have more control over his curse than he'd thought? 

Mahdi let out a grunt as he knelt next to Ed. **"Whether or not you pose a danger, I cannot say,"** he commented, and Ed glanced up at him, even as Sanaz scoffed. Mahdi shot his wife a brief irritated look, then focussed on Ed, meeting his gaze unflinchingly. **"But it is true that you've lived with us for seven seasons now, and still no one has been hurt, save yourself."** And he actually sounded...upset about that? 

(A very large part of Ed suspected he was dreaming, and was waiting with a heavy heart for the part where all of his hopes were crushed; his dreams hadn't ended well since his own ego had trapped his brother in metal and lost himself an arm and a leg.) 

Mahdi grunted as he shifted again, into what Ed suspected was intended to be a more comfortable position, then he ordered, **"Explain this curse to us. Fully. How it came upon you, what you've observed of it, everything."**

Ed looked down at his father's journal, considered just leaving and never looking back, as he'd intended. But, honestly, he didn't _want_ to leave. He loved travelling with the tribe, with the people who shared that half of his heritage that he'd never even known about until after his father was dead. He loved feeling like he _belonged_ , because he hadn't had that in...too long. With Al, certainly, but not with a _community_ , not since they'd left home and sworn never to look back. 

He wasn't certain he deserved it, but he didn't want to turn his back on this family he'd found. (For Al's sake, if not his own.) 

**"It's a complicated story,"** he warned quietly, brushing the paper he'd written 'I'm sorry' on off the cover of Hohenheim's journal, **"and the 'how' is connected to the events that led to Xerxes' downfall."**

**"The sudden deaths?"** Behnam said, before coughing and whispering, **"I'm sorry."**

When Ed glanced up, he found both Mahdi and Sanaz giving Behnam silencing looks, and he couldn't quite stop a smile – not a particularly happy one, but a smile nonetheless – as he agreed, **"Yes."** He picked up the journal and held it up in front of himself, catching all their attention. **"Banu told me, when I asked, that you were surprised to hear my father's name because he shared it with the man who survived and went to Xing."**

**"This is true,"** Mahdi agreed, his words cautious. 

Ed nodded and set the journal down on the ground between them. **"King Xerxes wanted to become immortal,"** he offered, staring at the journal's cover, **"so he asked for the help of one of his court alchemists, who had created an artificial lifeform – a homunculus – using the blood of one of his former slaves. The homunculus knew alchemy far beyond the knowledge of any human alchemists, and it told King Xerxes how to create the array he'd need. But he didn't tell anyone the price it would cost, or that King Xerxes wouldn't be the recipient of the wished-for immortality.**

**"My father, Van Hohenheim, originally Slave 23, shared blood with that homunculus, and so he received half of the lives of the people of Xerxes."** He looked up, then, meeting each of their wide eyes, before looking back at the journal again. **"He was one of the two survivors of Xerxes, and the one who travelled to Xing, refining the art of alkahestry in return for their kindness in sheltering and feeding him while he struggled with the thousands of souls inside him."**

Ed sighed and shook his head, then tapped the cover of the journal. **"He meant this for you lot, so you'd know what had happened, but he'd never found the courage to actually give it to you. It covers pretty much the entirety of his life, up until the village he died in. He was...trying to find a way to die, I guess. Because he didn't want to outlive my mum and my brother and me."**

**"Instead he passed his immortality on to you?"** Behnam asked, and Ed found a vaguely confused look on his face, when he glanced up at him. 

Ed couldn't quite stop a snort. **"No."** Then he stopped, frowned a bit as he recalled _why_ the figure had cursed him. **"Well, yes, actually, in a way. It's–"** He sighed and rubbed at his mouth for a moment, then shook his head. 

**"Hohenheim left when I was four,"** he said, because none of them really knew his personal history, not the whole of it; it was quite true that he'd always avoided telling anyone about how he'd lost his arm and leg, or where his brother – who he sometimes mentioned – was. **"My mum died shortly after, sick from an illness that had struck our village. Al and I had been learning alchemy from some of the books Hohenheim had collected and left behind when he'd left, and I got the brilliant idea that we could use it to bring Mum back."** He reached up and touched the remains of his right shoulder, quietly admitted, **"I was a fool.**

**"There is no equivalent price for transmuting life, and we paid for my folly with our own bodies. I lost my leg, and Al lost his whole body. I managed to attach his soul to a suit of armour standing in Hohenheim's study, for the price of my arm, keep him alive."** He fisted his hand in the fabric of his shirt, ground out, **"I didn't want to be alone."**

He still didn't, or he'd have done the smart thing and just left, rather than telling them his story; he hadn't grown up at all, had he? 

Sanaz reached across him and gently pulled his hand away from his empty sleeve, and her eyes, when Ed met them, were kind as she said, **"If humans were meant to be alone, we wouldn't be born surrounded by our family."**

**"I know that,"** Ed muttered, looking away from her. **"We went looking for a way to get our bodies back, but–"** he put on a smile that felt sickly **"–it turns out souls can only be attached to vessels other than their own body for so long before the connection falls apart. One day, Al just stopped moving, and I–"**

He stopped, swallowed, tried to figure out how to explain what had happened. **"When you...perform– No."** He huffed a bit and looked up at his audience, found them all with varying levels of heartbreak writ across their faces, and had to look away, ended up staring down at his hand. **"This is about half hypothesis, but I believe everyone who has the potential to use alchemy has a...a sort of _door_ , inside them, or attached to them but stored on a separate plane of existence, I don't really know."** He grimaced a bit. **"I don't suppose it really matters how it's connected or where it's stored, but it's there, and it determines the price of any alchemic exchange. Like, if I wanted to add skulls or something to my leg–"** he tapped his peg leg **"–that door would determine exactly how much energy the transmutation would cost, and how much, if any, material would be lost in the process, if that makes any sense?"** He chanced another glance around at them. 

**"As much sense as alchemy has ever made when you've tried to explain it?"** Behnam offered, because he'd sat through a couple of Ed's tutoring sessions with members of the tribe who'd been interested in learning a bit about the science, even though he very obviously hadn't cared one way or the other. 

**"It makes sense,"** Mahdi announced. **"The amount of energy and material required is wholly dependent on the knowledge, finesse, and innate talent of the practitioner, not to mention the array being used. As such, there can't simply be _one_ formula, but an ever-evolving balance. And the most sensible way to determine that balance each time a transmutation is performed, would be if each person has their own set of scales."**

Ed couldn't help but shoot Mahdi a disbelieving look, and heard Sanaz muffle a laugh on his other side. 

Mahdi scowled, looking between Ed and Behnam. **"You can't truly believe my daughter and yourselves to have been the first members of this tribe to realise knowledge is necessary to avoid danger,"** he snapped. 

Sanaz coughed and said, **"Mahdi spent a few years studying alkahestry in Xing when we were a little older than you, Ed."**

Mahdi shot her a betrayed look, but Ed apparently startled all of them by laughing, and he ducked his head. **"I'm sorry,"** he managed, was fairly certain his amusement was still all-too-obvious in his voice. 

Mahdi sighed and ruffled his hair, bringing Ed to peek out at him. The man was smiling faintly, his expression a little bit helpless. **"The science of transmutation is in our blood,"** he admitted, **"and even the wisest among us have felt the need to rebel at one point."**

**"My world view is completely shifted,"** Behnam announced, and he was wearing the widest grin Ed had ever seen on him when he looked over. 

**"Be quiet,"** Mahdi ordered, though he sounded more resigned than cross, and Behnam looked away with an amused cough. When Mahdi turned back to Ed, though, his expression had gone serious again. **"You hypothesise that each of us has access to a sort of balancing object?"**

Ed sighed and nodded. **"A door,"** he agreed, and Mahdi raised his eyebrows at him. Ed took a deep breath, then quickly explained, **"When you perform human transmutation, when part of the cost has to come from your physical being, you're dragged over to this other...plane of reality, I suppose. And there's a stone door and a...a gatekeeper, there. And the gatekeeper takes whatever physical part of your body you've given in trade."**

Mahdi had closed his eyes at the words 'human transmutation', a sort of air of ancient grief forming around him. 

**"Your arm and leg, then...?"** Sanaz said quietly. 

Ed shrugged. **"Yeah, they're in that other place."** He looked down at his remaining fist as he clenched it. **"With Al."**

Sanaz let out a pained noise, while Behnam cursed. 

Ed glanced at Mahdi again, found the elder simply watching him, sorrow in his eyes, but no sign of judgement, and that made it a little easier to admit, **"When Al– When he stopped moving, I knew where he'd end up, so I went in after him. The gatekeeper, he – it, really, I guess – told me that Hohenheim was dead, but he'd left something unfinished, some duty that the gatekeeper needed seen to. It proposed a deal: I finish what my father left undone, and Al would be returned to this world, body and soul.**

**"Of course I said yes,"** Ed continued with a smile that felt wrong on his face, turning his attention to his hand again, as though all the answers were there. **"I didn't care about the cost, fully intended to just trade myself for his life, if I could, but I–"** He shook his head. **"I thought I'd got off free, that time, except a few oddities I couldn't explain, like not really feeling hungry or tired, until later, on the road, when I–"**

No, he wouldn't go through this with them. He _couldn't_.

He shoved his hand down against the ground next to him, shifted his right leg around to start the difficult process of standing, but he was halted by hands on both of his shoulders; Sanaz and Mahdi. 

"Ed," Sanaz said quietly, while Ed stared down at his peg leg, **"it's okay."**

He let himself settle back down, swallowed with some difficulty, then opened his mouth and somehow got out, **"A robber slit my throat, while I was taking a break. I thought–"** He couldn't stop a wretched sort of laugh. **"I thought that was it, I'd failed, but then I opened my eyes again and I didn't... There were– My teeth–"** he reached up and tapped his canines with his fingers **"–had grown. Fangs. And I just sort of...acted on instinct. Ripped out his throat, drank his b-blood."**

For one, horrifying moment, he was once again surviving his first death and murder, the taste of blood thick on his tongue, and bile climbing his throat–

" _Ed_!" Mahdi snapped, and Ed flinched, realised he was breathing way too fast, his hand clenched white-knuckled tight around his peg leg. 

**"Sorry,"** he rasped, and his voice sounded as ruined as if he'd just thrown up, but there was no sign of such. He swallowed and shook his head, couldn't look up as he forced himself to explain the specifics of his curse, since Mahdi had asked for that: **"I don't really know the rules or anything, but little scratches – losing a little blood here, a little bit there – is fine, I don't really notice it. Kind of a vague sense of... I don't know. When you're not really _hungry_ , but you wouldn't refuse a couple berries or whatever. That.**

**"But, it adds up, it always does. And I can– Animal blood sort of...holds off the, the hunger, for a bit, enough that–"** He stopped, shook his head. **"I can't keep down real food or water or anything if I...need blood. Animals work, just enough – for _long_ enough – that I can play at being normal for a couple days."**

A hand squeezed his left shoulder, and he chanced a glance over, found Sanaz watching him with sad, worried eyes. **"You've been doing that with us?"** she guessed. 

Ed shrugged, attempted to sound casual as he agreed, **"Of course. It's not like I've had any cause to drink any human blood, and it would have looked strange if I just refused to eat, or threw up after every meal."** He shrugged again, looked away from her, toward his father's journal. **"Apparently I was already skipping enough meals to be suspicious, though."**

**"This duty your father didn't complete, what is it?"** Mahdi asked. 

Ed looked over and shrugged. **"No idea."** He waved a hand at the journal laying on the ground between them. **"I'd hoped to find the answer in there, or one of his other journals, but all I've learnt is his history and some alkahestry."**

Mahdi nodded and met his gaze. **"So,"** he said flatly, **"you had no idea of how to free yourself from this curse, and you're incapable of controlling it."**

Ed flinched, had to look away. 

"Mahdi–" Behnam started, before falling suddenly silent, likely having been glared at until he shut up. 

**"It seems, to me,"** Sanaz said quietly, **"that you've come to a crossroads. You can leave us and continue looking for answers while avoiding other humans for fear of what you might do to them, potentially missing the answers you've been seeking in doing so; or you can learn to control your curse, and eventually leave to search without fear."**

**" _Control_ it?"** Ed repeated, disbelieving. **"And how would I accomplish that? Live in a constant state of starving for blood until I can walk through the camp without wanting to rip out someone's throat?"**

**"No,"** Sanaz replied, unperturbed. **"Your control is best found in learning to stop yourself before you kill whoever you're drinking blood from."**

Mahdi let out what might have been an intrigued noise, but Ed could only just hear it past the strange rushing sound filling his ears. **"Are you _insane_?!"** he demanded, shoving at the ground with his foot and hand, shifting away from her, because he could already see where she was going with this, and it was _horrifying_. **" _No_! I'd rather spend the rest of my life killing bandits on the road, than hurt any of you!"**

**"What if it isn't just bandits?"** Mahdi asked, his voice hard. **"What if you fall and crack your head open one time, and the closest person to you when you go looking for blood is a child?"**

Bile was climbing Ed's throat, panic clawing at the inside of his chest, and he sort of shifted back again, his fingers nudging against his crutch. He grabbed for it, used it to haul himself to his feet, even as he bit out, **"I'm _leaving_."** Couldn't say what his voice sounded like, but it _didn't matter_. He just needed to get out, get _away_.

So he turned, half stumbled out of his tent, ignoring Behnam calling his name behind him, and ducking a half-hearted grab by one of the guards still standing outside his tent, didn't look to see who it was. 

He returned to the woods, kept going until he couldn't any more, then bent over his crutch and coughed up stomach bile; he hadn't eaten real food in almost twenty hours, of course there was nothing to come up. 

He walked a bit further, couldn't think about what Sanaz and Mahdi had said, so he turned his mind to other matters, matters he'd been trying so hard _not_ to think of for _years_ : Al. 

Al, who he'd shunned. Who was all alone in that other place, with only _that being_ for company, and watching Ed screw up as entertainment. Which, given, Al had always seemed to derive a certain amount of pleasure from watching Ed's various failures, so maybe it _was_ actually entertainment to him? Sometimes? 

He stopped to rub at his chest, over his heart, then at his mouth; he missed his brother. _Had_ been missing him for far too long, but now that he could admit that, maybe Al missed him, too, the longing was so much _stronger_.

Well, he'd only found just enough animal blood to last him the night, anyway, since he hadn't intended to stay any longer than it took him to collect his things; there was no harm in taking a trip to see his brother. Assuming none of the tribe came out after him. 

He wasted an hour hunting down a cave, transmuted the opening most of the way closed – he had no interest in suffering suffocation, and he'd need the light of the rising sun to see what he was doing – then quickly sketched the array that was becoming far too familiar. He set his crutch aside, uninterested in losing it in transit again, then pressed his fingers to the array. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a side story that falls between this chapter and the third, titled _Witness to a Shooting Star_. It's OC-PoV, explaining, a bit, Sanaz and Mahdi's reasoning for letting Ed stay with the tribe.
> 
> Art for this chapter:  
> [Ed](http://arantxamagnelli.tumblr.com/post/152672151417/second-piece-for-batsutousais-fic-spirits-fall) by [arantxmagnelli](http://arantxamagnelli.tumblr.com/)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The side story covering Mahdi and Sanaz's discussion after Ed left is posted everywhere, for those interested in reading it.

"Alchemist," the figure said flatly.

"Not here for you," Ed informed it, even as he turned, searching for–

Al slammed into his side, and they both hit the ground with grunts, while the figure let out a very loud, very _pointed_ sigh. 

Ed ignored it in favour of wrapping his arm around his brother and holding on as tight as he could, felt so unspeakably reassured to find Al's grip on him just as tight. "I'm sorry," he choked out. "I overreacted and then left you all alone for _years_."

"You're an idiot," Al agreed matter-of-factly, before leaning up over Ed and offering him a smile that only looked a little broken. "I'm glad you finally stopped being dumb on your own, for once." 

"Oiy!" Ed complained. "That's no way to speak to your big brother!" 

Al's whole face lit up, erasing what looked like decades' worth of worry lines. "It is when you're being– Brother?" Al asked, worry filling his voice as Ed closed his eyes, shame and regret warring for prominence. 

"I'm a terrible big brother," he whispered. 

Al was silent for a long moment, before he sort of flopped down on Ed, and he couldn't quite stop from letting out an 'oof' of air. "I forgive you," Al said, his words puffing against Ed's cheek and his chin digging into his shoulder, so utterly _real_. "This is hard. For both of us." 

And if that wasn't just the understatement of their lives. 

Ed cast about for something less depressing to talk about and remembered the blackberries he'd found on a bush outside the cave he'd holed up in, then shoved in his pocket. "Ah!" He shoved at Al a bit. "Off!" 

"Brother?" Al asked, clearly confused, but moving off Ed all the same. 

Ed grunted and shifted until he could reach into his pocket, then grimaced a bit as he pulled out the half-smushed berries. "Hells," he muttered, even as Al started laughing. 

"What're _those_ supposed to be?" Al asked, looking so very _alive_.

"Blackberries," Ed admitted, before holding out his handful. "Happy, uh, early nineteenth birthday?" 

Al gave him a flat look. "And what am I supposed to do with those?" 

"If you can't remember the mechanics of eating, that's not my problem," Ed shot right back, forcing his smile to remain steady, despite the reminder of why his brother might have forgotten how to eat; it may not have been his problem, but it _was_ his _fault_.

Al rolled his eyes. "No, I haven't forgotten. But I don't think I can eat here any more than when I was in the armour." He motioned around at the utter whiteness around them, broken only by their two Doors. 

"Why not?" Ed shot back, frowning slightly. "You've got a mouth and a stomach, everything necessary. Just because you're _not_ hungry, doesn't mean you _can't eat_ ; trust me, I'm becoming an expert." 

Sorrow flickered in Al's eyes and he looked away. "Yeah," he said quietly. "I know." 

Ed swallowed and carefully cupped his hand around the berries, then knocked it against Al's arm. "Hey. You used to love blackberries, remember? There was a little bush of them by the back door, and we'd always snack on them when Mum got cross about us being underfoot and ordered us outside." 

Al looked back at him, a heartbroken smile twisting his mouth. "Yeah," he agreed quietly. "She'd always tell us off about ruining our dinner when she caught us." 

Ed offered him a smile and raised his hand toward his brother a bit. "Come on. For me?" 

Al sighed and made a show of picking through the berry guts for the most intact of the lot, then popped it in his mouth. Almost immediately, his eyes went wide, then fell closed, the most _blissful_ expression Ed had ever seen taking over his face. "Oh my gods," he whispered, before opening his eyes and staring at Ed with bright eyes. " _Brother_! They're _delicious_! How could I have forgotten how delicious they are?!" 

Ed didn't even bother trying to stop his laugh, just wiggled his fingers at his brother. "Still feeling picky?" he couldn't resist asking. 

"Jerk!" Al shot back, utterly failing to sound or even _look_ cross as he started grabbing for every bit of berry in Ed's hand and shoving it into his mouth, rather like a man starved. 

Which, well, he kind of _was_. And it _hurt_ to think that, to remember that it had been almost _ten years_ since the last time Al had eaten anything. 

It did help, though, seeing that Al _could_ eat again. He might not _need_ to, same as Ed, but the fact was that he _could_.

Ed decided, laughing a bit as Al gave up on any sense of decorum and licked the berry juice straight off his hand, that he was going to bring a _feast_ with him next time. Best case, Al would fatten up a bit; worst case, Ed would end up getting stuck cleaning up his brother's shit because there wasn't any way for this world to manage human waste. 

(On that note, he could bring Al clothing, too, and maybe books or something? Some way to keep him amused when he wasn't watching Ed be a screw-up.) 

"Shut up, Brother," Al muttered, his cheeks flushed pink, purple juice staining his lips. 

"Can't help it," Ed insisted in return. 

Al peeked out at him from behind too-long golden hair, and his smile had gone a bit sad, but it was still there. "Thanks," he said. 

Ed shrugged and glanced away, feeling a bit self-conscious. "Yeah, whatever. Kinda lame, them getting all messed up and all–"

Al slammed into him again, and Ed just sighed as his brother grinned down at him from where he was lying half on top of him again. "Doesn't matter," he insisted, poking at Ed's chest with one bony finger. "It's the thought, remember?" 

That had been something Mum had often told them, when Al would get upset over how his alchemy attempts weren't near as good as Ed's; he remembered. "Yeah," he whispered, poking Al in the side. 

Al huffed a bit, then turned a considering eye on Ed, his expression suggesting Ed wasn't going to like what was about to come out of his mouth. "About...the Xerxesians." 

Ed couldn't quite keep himself from tensing, and he frowned and looked away, unwilling to actually shove Al off, but needing to show he didn't want anything to do with this conversation. 

Al sighed and poked Ed's cheek. " _Brother_ ," he stressed. "You can't keep on like this; it's okay to ask for help." 

"What Sanaz is suggesting isn't _help_ ," Ed snarled, turning to glare at his brother, "it's _suicide_!"

Al's gaze was hard as he met Ed's glare, and he leant up over Ed a bit, arms shaking as they supported his weight, but his voice was steady as he stated, "You're not a monster, Brother. Stop treating yourself like one." 

"You don't–!" Ed started, before realising that his brother likely _did_ know what he was talking about, watching from on high – or whatever – as Ed murdered with no hope of control. "What _I_ am hardly matters when I can't control–"

"It's just like alchemy!" Al interrupted, nearly shouting to shut Ed up. When Ed fell quiet to glare at him again, Al gave a brief nod of thanks, then explained, "Remember first learning? How the transmutation would get out of hand sometimes? Like the time you almost set fire to that book?" 

Ed frowned and looked away; he remembered, sure. He'd been so desperate to try the array he'd found, he hadn't checked to ensure the circle was all the way closed, and the energy had built up for a second, before escaping out the gap he'd left and jumping toward the book laying open next to the edge of the circle. The book had started smoking, and only Al throwing the glass of water he'd been sipping on it had saved them both from tragedy. 

"Remembering to close an array before activating it is nothing like–" He floundered for a moment, at a loss for words. 

"Control, Brother. Controlling your excitement, or how much energy you put into an array–" they'd both struggled with that, in the beginning "–or how quickly you can move on a false leg. This is the same thing." 

"That's all different," Ed whispered, closing his eyes because he was tired of white, and he couldn't bring himself to look at Al. "Not everything can be controlled, Alphonse." 

"I believe this can," Al insisted, and Ed couldn't stop from opening his eyes, looking up into his brother's face, so much _faith_ in his eyes, it honestly hurt to see. "If anyone can beat this, Ed, it's _you_."

"Al, I–"

"Time's up!" the white figure with Ed's arm and leg shouted, right before black arms shot out of their opposing Doors and tore Ed and Al apart. 

"I'll be back!" Ed shouted, reaching toward Al, desperate and a little bit afraid; he didn't _want_ to go! 

Al smiled at him, tears in his eyes, as he called back, "I know!" So much _trust_ in his eyes and his voice. 

Because Al had never given up on Ed, had always believed he would find a way to do the impossible: To bring Mum back. To get their bodies back. To finish Hohenheim's abandoned duty. 

He wondered, sometimes, if his brother was insane. 

\--September 1809--

Ed opened his eyes to the cave floor, had about half a minute to think derisive thoughts about his brother's belief in him, before he recognised the sound of rocks scraping together and realised the cave was _too bright_.

He jerked his head up to see, found an unfamiliar person – hard to tell gender or age under the too-large, ragged coat they were wearing, but they looked small enough to be prepubescent – shifting the rocks he'd used to block the entrance out of the way. There was plenty of space for either Ed or the stranger to get through, and Ed felt distinctly panicked as he felt his hunger for blood starting to rise. Slowly, like it was _mocking_ him. 

Dark brown eyes landed on him, and the person sounded relieved as they started speaking in Drachman. 

Ed had learnt a handful of Drachman, but he couldn't think of a single word right then, and he shoved himself up and awkwardly scrambled back as far he he could get in the cave, shaking his head. 

The Drachman let out a confused noise, then hopped over the remaining rocks and into the cave, speaking again. 

"You need to _go_ ," Ed tried, couldn't say exactly what language it had come out in – he'd just been speaking Amestrisan with his brother, who knew what his brain was wired for right that moment – and waved his hand in a 'go away' manner. 

The person didn't heed him, instead stepping closer, speaking again, slower, quieter, like they thought it would calm him? 

A suggestion of humour burbled to life under Ed's panic, because people kept treating him like a scared animal when he was trying to get them to run from him. 

Well, if this moron wouldn't take the hint and run, it was up to Ed to get out. He cast around for his crutch, found it within easy reach, and grabbed it, using it to shove himself to his feet. 

Barely giving himself time to get steady, and ignoring the Drachman's noise of surprise, Ed shoved past them and stumbled his way out the of the hole the person had made, somehow kept his feet, then hurried away. 

He killed the first non-human he came across – a fox – then stopped to lean against a tree for a moment to catch his breath. 

It was then, and _only_ then, that he realised what had just happened: He'd managed to keep enough control of his hunger, that he hadn't attacked that person. He'd been pretty much starved for blood and had actually had to _touch_ the person to get away from them, and he'd managed it. 

Did... Did Sanaz and Al have something? Could he learn to control his terrible hunger, keep from killing other humans? 

Was there a chance that he could survive this without any more (human) blood on his hand? 

The was a rustling of underbrush, an irritated snarl in another language, and the person from before popped out of a bush about five feet to Ed's right. They took a brief look around, looking right past Ed, then took two steps forward before freezing and turning to look at Ed again, their face lighting up. They said something in a delighted tone, pointing at Ed. 

Ed shot them his best unimpressed look and said, "Nyet." 

'No'. One of the handful of words he knew, and the only one he could think of that might get across how much he didn't want this person continuing to follow him. 

The person rattled off a string of Drachman in response and stepped toward Ed, looking hopeful. 

**"What part of 'no' don't you understand?!"** Ed demanded in Xerxesian. **"Go _home_!"**

The person cocked their head to one side, looking confused. 

**"Hells,"** Ed muttered, leaning over to grab the fox carcass – whether he'd take Sanaz up on her suggestion or not, his things were still in the camp, and he might as well bring them the fox while he was there; no reason to waste potential food. **"Figures I'd get found by a Drachman moron."**

Once he had the carcass situated with his crutch, he turned and continued his way back to camp, rather unsurprised to find the person following him, and irritated that that meant he couldn't hunt any further en route. 

Well, on the plus side, Mahdi and Sanaz knew he didn't actually _need_ to eat food, now, so he should be able to get away with avoiding any while he was there, at least until he'd found time to hunt some more animals. Assuming he didn't do the smart thing and run like hell as soon as he had his things. 

He remembered Al's trusting expression and his words, and sighed; he supposed he had to give it a try, if only so Al didn't make his life hell next time he visited. 

Azad – a member of the tribe's hunting party and only a year older than Ed – met them just before the camp would be in view, leaning casually against his spear and flashing a really obnoxious grin. **"Hey, Ed. Who's the kid?"**

Ed sighed. **"No idea, on account of the fact that I don't speak Drachman. Sanaz and Mahdi in their tent?"**

Azad gave him a sort of 'are you an idiot?' look that Ed was sorely tempted to punch off his face, then said, **"Neither of them speak Drachman, either."**

Ed closed his eyes and took a moment to count to ten in his head, because he couldn't really afford a playful tussle, as low on blood as he was. **"I _know_ that,"** he said at last, opening his eyes to glare at Azad. **"I need to talk to them about–"**

**"Why you went flying out of here last night, looking like Ahriman was chasing you?"** Azad suggested, before flashing Ed a sharp, superior smile. **"Trust me, the whole _tribe_ knows."**

Ed considered Azad's careless stance, easily in range for Ed to hit him with his crutch. He wasn't afraid of him, was acting the same as always, like taunting Ed to get a rise out of him was the best thing in the universe, and didn't have the potential to end with him as a corpse. 

Azad may have heard about Ed leaving in a hurry, but he had no idea _why_ , clearly. 

Ed smiled back, just as sharp, and returned, **"What's to say I _wasn't_ running from some great evil?"**

**"And what's to say,"** a deep voice said from behind Azad, making him jump, **"he didn't bring Ahriman _back_?"**

"Mahin!" Azad howled at his sister, as she stepped out from behind him, grinning madly. 

Mahin wiggled her fingers at Ed. **"Welcome back, Ed. Don't listen to Doom-and-Gloom, here."**

Ed snorted. **"I never do."**

Azad snarled a, **"You're such _children_ ,"** at the pair of them, then made a show of turning away and looking for trouble. 

Mahin burst out laughing, while Ed just rolled his eyes, resigned to Azad's usual manner. He waited until Mahin had stopped chortling, then asked, **"Can you figure out what this one wants?"** motioning behind him with his head, at where the Drachman was still standing. 

**"Oh?"** Mahin stepped closer, her amusement giving way to a polite smile. "Zdravstvuyte," she offered. "Menja zovut Mahin. A kak vas zovut?" 

"Menja zovut Vladimir!" the person replied, followed by a string of Drachman that Ed couldn't hope to keep up with, but which Mahin seemed to be managing fine, by her interested expression. 

When the person finished speaking, Mahin gave them a short response, then turned to Ed and explained, **"His name is Vladimir. He's visiting family in one of the local villages and got lost in the woods, then found you passed out in a cave?"**

Ed grimaced and nodded, not having any interest in explaining that incident. (And he should probably go back and erase the array some point soon, since nature wasn't likely to cover it up in that cave, and the last thing any of them needed was some aspiring alchemist giving it a shot on a whim.) 

Mahin reached forward, aiming for Ed's forehead, but he ducked her with a cross, **"I'm _fine_. Kid got lost, found me, followed me back to camp hoping we could point him back to where he belongs?"**

Mahin sighed. **"Essentially. I take it he's my problem, then?"**

**"Please?"** Ed agreed. **"I should go find Mahdi and Sanaz."**

Mahin snorted. **"You'd be useless anyway,"** she pointed out, and Ed snorted himself as she turned back to Vladimir and started speaking Drachman again. 

Ed made his escape before she could change her mind about his usefulness, handed the fox over to the small group sitting around the fire – and bore some gentle ribbing about his laziness in making them skin it, as well as his panicked escape from camp before dawn, because clearly everyone _had_ heard about that much – then turned toward the tent the tribe's leaders called their own. 

He stopped just outside, took a steadying breath, then called, **"Leaders? A word?"**

It was Sanaz who stepped out first, her expression almost _hopeful_ for a moment, before breaking open with relief. "Ed," she said with a smile. **"There you are."**

Mahdi stepped up behind her, catching the doorway of the tent and pushing it up a bit higher. **"Where were you?"** he asked, his tone flat, but something almost kind in his eyes. 

Ed swallowed and tightened his fingers around his crutch. **"I...needed to speak with my brother,"** he admitted, because he might as well be honest with them, at that point. 

Mahdi's expression darkened just enough for Ed to notice – he clearly understood such wasn't as simple as just walking a couple tents over – but whether or not Sanaz got it, Ed couldn't say, as her forehead creased with concern and she said, **"You look pale."**

Ed shrugged, unsurprised, but when she stepped forward, one hand coming up and reaching for him, he said, **"Please don't touch me right now,"** because he could sense the too-familiar hunger, only barely held back by the fox's blood he'd had. 

**"Come inside,"** Mahdi ordered as he grabbed Sanaz's shoulder and tugged her back, toward the tent entrance he was still holding open. 

Ed followed the tribe leaders into their tent, only to freeze just inside when he found it rather...crowded. 

In truth, he wasn't particularly surprised to find Behnam, Banu, and Minoo there, given how close he'd become to the three, but he _was_ surprised to find Behnam's wife, Ava, and Banu's husband, Hamid, there. He knew them both – knew everyone in the tribe, because it was hard _not_ to get to know people you spent your days travelling with – but nowhere near as well as he knew their spouses. Certainly not enough to let themselves become involved in Sanaz's crazy idea, though, perhaps, it was _because_ they were spouses of the people Ed was closest to among the tribe, that they'd been involved; it was only fair they know exactly who to blame when things went wrong. 

**"You spoke to your brother,"** Mahdi said once the flap had closed behind Ed, and he looked over to find himself being pinned with a hard stare from the man, while the others in the tent let out various surprised noises. 

Ed swallowed and nodded. **"Yes,"** he admitted. 

**"At what price?"** Mahdi pressed. 

Ed tried a smile and held out his arm to show he was still whole. **"Nothing important."**

Mahdi didn't smile back, but it was Banu, rather than her father, who said, **"Ed, please. Do us the favour of not lying about your health."** There was a world of sadness in her eyes as she added, **"Not any more."**

He let his hand fall back to the grip of his crutch, wrapping his hand so tightly around it, it ached. **"Just...blood,"** he admitted quietly, couldn't meet any of their eyes. **"Whatever I have. It's–"** He shook his head. **"I'm fine."**

**"You're not,"** Sanaz insisted from way too close, and Ed couldn't quite stop himself from stumbling back a step, the doorway of the tent brushing his back. She let him, didn't try closing the gap between them again. **"You won't let me touch you because you're afraid of what you'll do to me."**

Ed flashed her a smile that felt too sharp. **"So what?"** he demanded, hated that he couldn't stop himself from lashing out when she cornered him. **"At least I have sense enough not to taunt a _monster_."**

Sanaz closed her eyes, while someone – Ed couldn't say who – let out a pained sound. 

**"Are you intending to run again?"** Mahdi asked, his tone flat, unimpressed. 

Ed felt off-balance for a moment, couldn't help but remember his brother's smile, so _trusting_. **"I–"** He stopped, cleared his throat and looked down, toward his mismatched legs. **"Al...thinks I should stay."**

**"At least one of you is willing to listen,"** Sanaz commented. 

Ed opened his mouth to tell her off, but then the scent of blood hit him, and he couldn't stop from jerking his head up, eyes catching on the bloody knife Sanaz was holding in one hand, while blood welled out of her other palm. He wanted to _run_ , but his hunger wouldn't let him, held him fast where he stood, his canines lengthening utterly without his say-so. He managed to shake his head, the closest he could get to a plea for her to _go_. To not endanger herself like this. 

Sanaz held out her cut hand. **"Come,"** she ordered. 

Ed stepped forward, his crutch falling from his grasp as he reached out with his hand, taking hers in a grip that was deceptively gentle. A part of him was _screaming_ inside, trying to make his body turn, to _run_ , but he'd lost that chance as soon as he'd smelt her blood, and he felt a little like he was staring on in horror as his body bent forward, over her hand, and licked along the cut. 

The familiar taste of copper-life bloomed across his taste buds, and Ed's eyes slid closed, blocking him from having to watch as he sucked her blood through the broken skin. 

And, oh, _hells_ , but he hated how much more _filling_ human blood was, stabbing straight through to the heart of his horrible hunger in a way that animal blood _couldn't_. Like that first drink of cold water after days of trudging through the height of summer in southern Amestris, rationing the too-hot water in his canteen because he didn't know how long it had to last. 

But, too, there was a sort of...awareness, almost, of life in the blood. Like he could almost _sense_ Sanaz's soul, only noticeable because he was so very familiar with her. And it was a strong sense, but getting a little bit weaker with every swallow. 

He couldn't say _how_ he knew, but Ed could tell the moment he would be taking too much blood from her, weakening her too much, and his hunger – muted under the taste of blood on his tongue – didn't stop him from pulling away from her, stepping back and shaking his head. **" _Enough_ ,"** he insisted, his voice sounding ragged to his ears. 

"Maman?" Banu called. 

Ed jerked his head up to look at Sanaz, his heart in his throat. 

**"I'm fine,"** Sanaz said, and she looked a little paler than Ed was used to seeing her, didn't look wholly steady on her feet, but it didn't look like she was about to fall down dead any time soon, either. **"I'm just a little dizzy,"** she added with a reassuring smile, as though aware that she wasn't fooling any of them. And then she looked over and met Ed's eyes. "Ed?" 

Ed swallowed the taste of blood and couldn't help but look at where her hand was still held out, bleeding sluggishly. **"You need to wrap that,"** he managed. **"You can't afford to lose any more blood."**

Minoo quickly stepped forward with some bandaging, and Sanaz didn't fight her, instead watching Ed with interest. But it was Mahdi who asked, **"You can tell how much blood you can safely take from someone?"**

Ed looked over at him and found a scientist's curiosity staring back at him, something that had been all-too rare among members of the tribe, with their distrust of alchemy and alkahestry. It was settling, somehow, helping to ground him a bit. **"I–"** Ed frowned and rubbed at his mouth, was surprised to find it felt clean of blood; he'd never managed to drink from anyone before without making a mess. Even animals, though mammals, at least, usually had fur to help him clean his face. Given, that was also the first time he hadn't had to fight his...victim. **"Apparently,"** he settled on, before shaking his head. **"But it's not something I've ever noticed before. I don't–"**

**"Then it's something worth exploring,"** Mahdi said, and Ed glanced back up at him to find that unfamiliar curiosity again, but also something a little like hope. **"Or don't you want to learn control?"**

Control? 

Ed heard himself laughing, disbelieving and relieved: Yes, he'd managed to control himself. He'd stopped himself from hurting Sanaz. She'd taken a chance on him – had _believed in him_ , just like Al – and he hadn't screwed up. For what felt like the first time in his _life_ , he'd managed to do something _right_.

"Ed?" Sanaz called, and he realised she was standing right in front of him, concern in her eyes and her undamaged hand held up like she wanted to touch him, but wasn't sure she'd be welcome. 

Ed stepped forward and caught her in a hug, whispering, **" _Thank you_ ,"** into her hair. 

She hugged him back, a little weaker than he'd have expected of her, but hardly so weak as to suggest she wouldn't recover. **"Any time,"** she promised. 

For the first time since he'd fought that bear, Ed felt like it would be okay for him to stay. 

-0-

Ed did head back out to the cave that night, once most of the camp was asleep, and removed any trace of the array. He also took a couple of the blackberries from that bush and popped them in his mouth, because he was reassuringly full on human blood – Minoo had cornered him later that evening, after he'd skipped dinner, pressing him until he'd admitted that, no, he wasn't full enough to chance real food; so she'd taken a page out of her grandmother's book and cut her palm, holding it out and letting blood drip to the ground until Ed gave in – for the first time in a long time, and he was in a _good mood_ about it for the first time in...pretty much _ever_ , actually. 

He whispered, "Thank you, Al," into the quiet night, hoped his brother was watching and had heard that. (If so, he'd probably rub it in next time Ed visited, but he was okay with that; Al deserved that right, and fuck knew they both desperately needed something to smile at.) 

Over the next couple days, Ed had to get used to other people knowing about him, and he tried not to roll his eyes every time one of them asked how he was, or if he needed any blood. ( _Please_. He'd been being cautious for so long, nothing was going to make him suddenly start performing the dangerous stunts of his youth, especially since he was still technically hurting his friends – his _family_ , because they were that – every time he took blood from them, and he could never be careless with their lives.) 

One of the things Mahdi insisted on, since it was no secret that _something_ had happened in the woods, was making the rest of their tribe aware that Ed was... Well. Mahdi and Sanaz had apparently decided to give it a religious spin, telling everyone that Ed had been cursed by daevas – Ed could certainly see the demonic cast to that white figure's actions, and he was maybe a little amused by the mental image of it with horns and smelling of sulphur, though that was more an Amestrisan concept than Xerxesian – to either live in exile to protect the people he cared most for, or chance being injured and killing them in madness. If not for his hope to find some sort of ancient blessing capable of ending the curse – either in his father's notes, or simply in their tribe's own records – he would have continued to do so, but he'd taken a chance, and they all knew how hard it was to leave people you loved. 

Ed wasn't there for the actual meeting – had been happy to take the option to avoid it, when offered – and had, in fact, vanished into the woods to forage for food, not coming back until well after dinner. Which kind of defeated the purpose of foraging, but it had given him something to do while he'd been worrying over the reactions and trying to gather the courage to go back. 

He didn't try to sneak back into camp, but he did huddle against his crutch a bit, feeling the heavy stares of the tribe following him as he made his way over to the main fire circle and set his basket down just within range of the first person he reached that was seated there. **"Sorry I'm late,"** he offered quietly, before turning to head for his tent; he'd much prefer trying to break one of his father's many coded journals and figure out what horrible thing he was hiding that time, than stay and make everyone – including himself – even more nervous. 

He managed about two steps away from the fire circle, when Azad called, "Ed!" 

He couldn't stop a sigh – half-irritated, half-resigned – and turned to face the other man. "Azad," he returned in as even a voice as he could, hoped Azad got that he wasn't in the mood for his usual teasing. 

In fact, Azad didn't look much like he was in the mood for teasing, either, his arms crossed tight across his chest and a certain wariness in his eyes that Ed had expected, but still hurt, all the same. It was a _little_ reassuring to see he wasn't carrying a spear with him, but no one tended to carry one inside the camp, unless they were on their way to go hunting or on guard duty, so it really only meant Azad hadn't had the time to run past his tent and grab a weapon before calling out to him. 

**"Do you like me?"** Azad asked, his voice tight. 

**"Do I–?"** Ed started, frowning, before it occurred to him exactly what Azad meant; if there was anyone in the camp that Ed didn't care for – might be willing to attack – it would probably be Azad, and he couldn't guess who decided that Azad needed to ask, but he sort of wanted to punch them in the face. 

That said, Ed straightened and met Azad's eyes. **"You drive me crazy and I've thought more than a few times about bruising your shin with my crutch, but let me make one thing _abundantly clear_."** He paused to cast a gaze over the audience that had gathered when he wasn't paying attention, didn't let himself linger on Banu or Behnam's reassuring smiles, then once again met Azad's uncertain stare. **"I would rather be tied up and left to rot in a walled-up cave, than watch a _single person_ in this camp be hurt, least of all by _myself_."**

The clearing was utterly silent, save for the snap and pop of the wood in in the fire. 

Ed swallowed and turned away, toward his tent. **"Good night,"** he offered, a little too quiet, but he didn't really have the energy for anything more that night. 

**"Ed, wait,"** Azad said, right before a hand brushed Ed's shoulder. 

Ed couldn't keep himself from flinching away from the contact, half of him forever expecting to be kicked out, beat around the head until he fled because he was a _monster_ in human form, blood long having stained his hand so deeply, no amount of soap would ever wash it clean. 

Azad looked startled, when Ed first twisted to look at him, and then something like grief twisted his expression, and he'd yanked Ed into a too-tight hug before he could try to get away again. **"I'm sorry,"** he whispered. 

Ed squeezed his eyes shut against tears he couldn't hope to explain the cause of and, as soon as Azad freed him, he fled back to his tent and hid in his bedroll for the rest of the night. 

The next morning, when he and the children left on one of their foraging trips, Azad was standing guard, and he shot one of his familiar insults after Ed, his smirk as wide as if the night before had never happened. 

Ed sort of froze, confused, and couldn't stop himself from snarling back an automatic insult. 

Azad laughed and stepped forward to clap Ed on the back, like he and the other hunters sometimes did to each other, while the children all giggled. 

Ed blinked, then snorted, made an insulting gesture back at Azad, and started quickly into the woods, hoping no one saw the wide grin on his face. 

He wasn't going to be scared away. These people – _his_ people – accepted him as he was, curse and all. Just like Al had. 

He wasn't alone. 

\--November 1809--

Slowly, everything calmed back down, which was assisted by them getting back on the road to return to Xerxes for the winter solstice. People stopped tiptoeing around him, or shooting him uncertain looks when they thought he wasn't looking, and those of his closest friends who knew the truth, stopped asking him constantly about his blood-levels. 

One morning, after about an hour of silence in the cart together, Banu said, "Edward." 

Ed looked up from the journal he was struggling to decode and asked, a bit distractedly, **"Yeah?"**

Banu gave him a considering look and said, **"You said your name was Ed."**

Ed blinked at that a couple times, then remembered that Hohenheim's journal always used his full name, and he sighed. **"Yeah. It's sort of a... I don't know that it's _common_ , but some Amestrisan names are a bit long, like Al's – Alphonse – so we sort of shorten them. Nicknames. Mine is Ed, and I haven't..."** He shrugged and looked back down at his book. **"I prefer 'Ed', a bit, always introduce myself that way. Mum was...she was the only one who ever used it, really. And I guess him. Hohenheim."**

Banu was quiet for a long moment, long enough for Ed to look back down at his decoding, before she asked, **"Do you mind if I use it?"**

Ed shrugged. **"Don't really care,"** he admitted, because he didn't. He didn't _hate_ his full name, he just preferred his nickname. 

**"Okay."**

Banu started calling him 'Edward', after that, and it was...weirdly comforting, in a way, hearing his name again. Like he was a child again, before Mum died and everything went to hell. 

Not that he'd ever tell anyone that. 

\--February 1810--

For a minute, Ed didn't realise what he'd decoded, just kept going, because he'd got in the habit of decoding as much as he had the patience for, then taking a break to read over his notes. 

Except, that time, his brain sort of stuttered to a stop and he looked back at two hauntingly familiar words: Human transmutation. 

**"What?"** he breathed, looking over the rest of the paragraph. 

"Ed?" asked Mahin, his current travelling partner, due to a sprained ankle. 

**_'Chao's death was a surprise, the first one I'd suffered since coming to Xing, and I didn't have a part of him within me to keep alive. Between myself and the other alchemists within me, we had more than enough knowledge to create an array to bring him back, and what good is this curse if it cannot be used to help those I care most for._**

**_'Our array was perfect, down to every last sigil. I still had Chao's body, not two days cold, it should have worked perfectly. But it didn't. And it never will, I understand now: Once a soul has left the body, it is gone forever. You cannot revive a person who has died. Not even with the legendary power of the fifth element.'_**

Ed stared at the words for a long moment, not even daring to breathe. 

His array had been perfect, they'd done everything right. But the _thing_ in the middle of it. Mum–

"Ed!" Mahin shouted, grabbing his shoulders and shaking him. 

He blinked up at her, realised his face was wet with tears and let go of the notebook to wipe at them. **"I'm okay,"** he croaked, and he _was_.

They hadn't killed Mum a second time. They hadn't made her suffer even _more_.

**"You don't look okay,"** Mahin returned, frowning. 

**"I just..."** Ed shook his head and motioned toward the journal in his lap. **"I'm...relieved. Human transmutation – bringing back the dead – it doesn't work."**

**"Of course not. You can't bring the dead back to life; that's not a power humans were entrusted with."**

Ed didn't bother stopping a helplessly fond sort of smile as he reached up and patted the hand she'd left on his shoulder. **"Sometimes,"** he offered, **"I need scientific proof for these things."**

Mahin scoffed and pulled her hand away, cheeks tinged with pink. **" _Science_. You should put a bit more faith in the wisdom of Ahuramazda."**

Ed shook his head. **"I think I'm a little too old to find religion."**

Mahin shot him a queer look, then shook her head and insisted, **"You're never too old to start believing."**

Ed just hummed in response and opened the journal back up to get back to work. 

He got about five more minutes' worth of decoding done, before Mahin asked, **"How old?"** her voice sort of...off. 

Ed blinked a few times as he looked back up at her, trying to reorient in the real world. "Huh?"

**"How old are you?"** Mahin clarified, waving a hand at him. 

**"Oh. Twenty."** He flashed her a smile. **"We're the same age."**

It was her turn to blink a few times, before she cautiously offered, **"You don't look it."**

Ed looked down at his hand, as though that would really help him figure out his age. He needed a mirror, but those weren't particularly common in the tribe, too easy to break, and he hadn't had much interest in looking into his own eyes in a...while. 

He remembered what Hohenheim had said about not ageing, and that white freak saying Al would be exactly as he had been in that moment, and he shrugged. **"That doesn't really surprise me,"** he admitted, turning his attention back to his decoding. 

Mahin didn't say anything else for a while. 

That night, just in case his brother had missed that exchange – he didn't, actually, know how often Al watched him – or didn't really understand enough Xerxesian to follow it, Ed wrote in the sand, _'AL- WE DIDN'T KILL HER A 2ND TIME'_. Because he needed to read that just as much as Ed had. 

**"Isn't this an odd place for a message for your brother?"** Behnam enquired when he wandered by on his way toward bed. 

Ed shrugged and smiled up at him. **"No odder than anywhere else I might write it."**

Behnam coughed and shook his head. **"True enough. Good night."**

**"Good night!"**

He didn't scuff out the message until the tribe started to rise in the morning, and could only hope Al had seen in in the meantime. 

\--March-June 1810--

While they were down at the beach, Ed managed to finish the journal where Hohenheim had said that human transmutation wasn't possible. There'd been a fair bit more in there about what the Philosopher's Stone – Hohenheim referred to it as the fifth element, probably because 'stone' was a bit of a misnomer, in his case – could and couldn't accomplish, and a handful of arrays for creating one – apparently discovered while trying to create an array to destroy one – though those had been especially hard to decode. (A part of Ed wished he'd just skipped those entirely, because once he understood how an array worked, his cursed knowledge from performing human transmutation meant he _never forgot it_. It became a part of him, as though he needed even _more_ blood on his hand.) 

Still, as difficult to translate the journal as it had been, he'd managed it, and that made him realise that _anyone_ could translate it, given enough time, which made him...nervous. A little sick and horrified. He should burn them, for all of their safety, but there was always the off-chance that he might need to reference them for something; his perfect recall for arrays didn't extend to anything else. 

And then he remembered he had access to a place where _no one would ever find them_. And he _had_ considered bringing his brother something to do, which the journals he'd already finished would certainly be. (Along with materials for translating the Xerxesian, just in case.) 

He'd also thought about bringing Al food and clothing, so, on their way back up to Xerxes for the summer solstice, he traded some minor alchemic feats with the Xingans along their route for extra food and some clothing that should fit his brother, as emaciated as he was. Because while he probably _could_ have just asked for extra from the tribe's stores, it seemed a little rude, especially since he was still eating their food, even though they knew he didn't _need_ to. (Although, taking part in at least one meal a day seemed to serve as reassurance that he wasn't trying to hide that he was low on blood, which meant they pestered him less, so it sort of evened out. Or something.) 

Of course, he'd had to ask for help translating, because his Xingan wasn't that good, which resulted in Mahdi cornering him after the second day with a stern frown. **"What are you planning?"** he demanded. 

Ed sighed and tried not to look too guilty as he admitted, **"I wanted to take some things to Al."**

Mahdi's frown turned a bit uncertain and he shook his head. **"He is in that other place."**

Ed nodded. **"Yeah. And I– Look, there's some stuff in some of Hohenheim's journals that I...don't really want getting around. Dangerous stuff. But I don't want to _burn_ them, because what if I need something in one of them?"**

"Ed," Mahdi said, tone flat and unimpressed. 

**"I still don't know what I'm supposed to _do_ , Mahdi!"** Ed reminded him, hated the slightly desperate edge to his voice. **"What if it involves something in one of those journals? I _can't_ destroy them! But I _can_ put them somewhere only _I_ can get to."**

Mahdi closed his eyes and rubbed at them, and Ed suspected he was weighing the potential evil of the alchemy in the journals – not to mention the forbidden human transmutation – against Ed's own future. 

Once again, Ed wondered if he shouldn't have just left, all those months ago, because forcing these people – _his_ people – to pick between their own laws and him was... 

They shouldn't have to help Ed carry his own sins, any more that Al was being forced to. 

**"Okay,"** Mahdi finally said, opening his eyes again to pin Ed with a hard look. **"When is it you intend to have this visit?"**

**"In the ruins,"** Ed admitted, figured he could use that room he'd found to sleep in during his first visit to the ruined city; the floor was flat enough for him to draw the array on, and it wouldn't be too hard to block all the exits. **"Don't really want to do it while we're on the move, since I'm honestly not quite certain what sort of time differences I'm dealing with."** Because, well, he _didn't_. It wasn't something he'd ever tried to measure, either in that world, or in the real world while he was over there. He was _fairly_ certain the figure gave him about eight minutes per visit, but it could be more, or it could be less. Could even just be dependent on its mood at the time, assuming the figure _had_ moods, which Ed was fairly certain it did. 

**"Fine."** Mahdi gave one firm nod, then turned and got about two steps away, before looking back at Ed. **"Are you certain non-living objects can survive over there?"**

Ed smiled a bit wryly and tapped a finger against his crutch. **"I have a history of forgetting crutches over there,"** he admitted. And he _had_ seen them during his last visit, he'd recognised once he'd recovered from the blood loss and dealing with the tribe. They'd been stacked neatly together, almost certainly by Al. (Almost made him want to keep 'losing' them over there, just to see how high the pile would get before Al gave into the urge to beat Ed with one.) 

Mahdi snorted, his eyes gleaming, and turned again to leave. As if Ed didn't know he was being laughed at. 

Oh well. 

.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, Hangebokhan and I sort of fed off each other a bit. I told her about this series before I started working on it, and we went back and forth, a bit, about which of us would enter the wave one of the fandom challenge, before doing the passing ships in the night thing and both entering. (Whoops. ^^; )  
> Anyway, Han did a series of flamels for the characters (find them on her dA; they're freaking _awesome_ ), and then [this picture of Truth standing behind Al](http://hangebokhan.deviantart.com/art/Alphonse-and-Truth-634911340), and this was the picture that inspired the opening scene in this chapter, a bit.

"Alchemist," the figure said almost before Ed's vision cleared from the light of the array. It sounded a little like it disapproved of... _everything_ , but also like it was resigned. Like, maybe, it was getting used to the fact that Ed was going to visit his brother, and damn the price. 

Ed nodded toward it – Al would like that, him being polite – then turned to find his brother sitting cross-legged over by the other Door, a fond sort of smile turning his mouth. "Hey, you okay?" he asked as he hurried over to Al as quickly as he could, a bit weighed down by all the things he'd brought. 

"Yeah," Al said, shaking his head. "Just don't really have the energy to get up right now. If that's okay?" 

Ed dropped everything next to his brother so he could lower himself to sit down next to him, then drag him into a hug, which Al was quick to return. "Yeah," he breathed against his brother's too-long hair, feeling a bit of tension ease out of his shoulders. "You're totally allowed to be lazy sometimes." 

Al shoved a finger in his side, then craned his neck to look around Ed at the bags. "What all'd you bring?" 

"Presents!" Ed exclaimed, and Al rolled his eyes. But he was grinning as Ed snagged the strap of the nearest bag and dragged it over to open. 

The first bag was clothing, and since he didn't really know how long he'd have to visit, Ed didn't insist Al actually get dressed, beyond handing him the thin, coarse desert outer robe he'd shoved into the top, and poking his bony arm until he huffed and slipped it on. 

"It's so _weird_ ," Al mumbled before he had it fully on, staring down at one of the sleeves, the end of which he was rubbing between two fingers. "Does all clothing feel like this?" 

Ed swallowed, torn somewhere between regret and amusement. "Nah. There's softer stuff in the bag. Here, other arm through the slee– _Alphonse_. I swear, you were easier to dress as a kid." 

"What would you know about dressing me as a kid?" Al shot back, his eyes bright and alive. But he _did_ finish putting on the robe, even if both of his hands kept rubbing at the fabric. 

" _Excuse you_ ," Ed shot back as he reached for another bag. "I distinctly remember someone running around with his trousers on his head." 

"You?" Al suggested sweetly. 

Ed shoved him, Al shoved him back, and then they caught each other's eyes and started snickering. 

For one, brief moment, it was like they'd never tried to bring Mum back. Like they were sitting together on the floor, in the home they'd burnt down, picking at each other because that's what brothers did. 

Ed swallowed, his amusement dying, and looked down to watch as he worked open the simple knot. "Did you see my message? About Mum?" 

"Yeah," Al whispered, and dropped his head against Ed's shoulder. "Nothing we did hurt her." 

"Yeah," Ed whispered back. And then he reached into the bag and found the orange he'd tossed in there without too much trouble. "Here," he said, a bit louder, as he pulled the fruit out and presented it to his brother. "You're gonna have to figure out how to open this on your own." 

"An orange!" Al exclaimed, grabbing it and immediately pressing it against his nose, breathing in deep. 

"You know," Ed commented, grinning, "the insides smell even better." 

"Shut up!" Al cuddled the orange against his chest and looked toward the bag. "What else is in there?" 

"All sorts," Ed promised, because he'd made a point of getting a bit of everything for Al, even stuff they'd never had as children. "Most of it should keep for a while, so you can eat it little bits at a time. There's an apple and a couple vegetables you should eat quicker, though. Assuming things don't just keep in stasis while they're here." 

Al dropped the orange into his lap and hugged Ed. " _Thank you_ ," he whispered. 

"Least I could do," Ed admitted, hugging him back. Because they both knew it was his own bleeding fault Al was stuck there. 

Al didn't say anything against that, though he did shove a finger into Ed's side again as a show of his disagreement. 

Ed just shook his head – at least Al wasn't _actively_ arguing with him about it, for once, though that was probably to keep from a row when they only had limited visitation time – and set the first food bag next to the bag of clothing, then grabbed the other one. "Also food," he explained, shifting it straight over to join the first two bags. 

"Are you looking to make me fat, Brother?" Al asked, tone dry, while his fingers played over the rind of the orange, long nails scratching at it and releasing little sprays of juice all over his fingers, the front of the desert robe, and the parts of his legs that weren't covered by fabric; he'd have a fun cleaning that up. 

"Maybe," Ed allowed, ducking to grab the last bag and hopefully hiding his grin from Al. 

Al's light punch said his attempts were for naught, but Ed wasn't too fussed, because he was smiling when he looked back over at him. "Idiot," Al muttered. 

"Don't talk to your big brother that way! _Especially_ after he brought you _presents_!"

Al caught his eyes and stated, "You're an idiot, Brother." 

"Rude!" 

Al started laughing, his whole face lighting up, and Ed couldn't even pretend he cared any more, laughing with him. 

They both shut up when the white figure stepped up behind them, twisting to look up at it, while Ed reached out and caught the hand Al was holding out toward him, fingers sticky with orange juice. "Hohenheim's journals," the figure said after a moment of silence. 

Ed looked toward the bag he'd pulled into his lap and managed to untie before the figure had come over. One of the journals was obvious through the gaping opening, and he swallowed and admitted, "Yeah. What's in those... People shouldn't have that information. They're safer here." 

The figure leant down between them, pulling out the visible journal. And while Ed managed to keep from reacting to its closeness, Al flinched away from it, his fingers tightening around Ed's. 

Ed's stomach jumped up into his throat, bile tickling the back of his tongue, and he should have asked, he knew, what it was like to be trapped with that freakish figure for... _years_. If the figure'd done anything to Al, said anything. But he couldn't. He didn't want to know. 

He wasn't strong enough to bear his brother's hell, too. (Al always had been the better of the two of them.) 

He turned his gaze to the opened bag, couldn't meet Al's eyes once the figure was out of the way. 

"Humans will always discover what they should never know," the figure said flatly, the pages of the journal crinkling as it flipped through them with Ed's stolen fingers. "It is one of the failings of your kind." 

That...hurt, a bit. But it was also true; more than anyone, Ed knew the horrors human curiosity could unleash. 

"These will not be returning to your world," the figure said flatly, even as the journal it had been holding was dropped into Al's lap. (Al jumped.) "Once you have upheld your end of the bargain, they will remain here." 

"Fine," Ed agreed, because that sounded like an excellent plan to him. 

A thin hand clenched tight around the stump of his right shoulder, and Ed looked over to find the figure _right there_ , his own stolen hand holding tight to the space where it should have been, and he couldn't keep from flinching away. " _All_ of them, Alchemist," the figure ordered. "Even the others." 

"Yeah," Ed whispered, couldn't manage anything stronger, even though he'd fully intended to bring _all_ of Hohenheim's journals to this place, save the one he'd given to the tribe, since that one was theirs. (And it didn't have any dangerous secrets in it, unless one counted the truth of Xerxes' destruction.) 

The figure drew away, and the empty space where Ed's arm should have been _ached_.

"Your time is up," the figure said, and Ed's stolen hand landed on Al's shoulder, over the coarse robe, as the sound of scraping stone warned of Ed's door opening. 

"I'll be back," Ed promised squeezing Al's hand as tight as he dared. "I promise!" 

"I know," Al whispered, squeezing his hand back. 

And then black hands were dragging at Ed, pulling him away, and he had to let go of Al so he could grab his crutch before he forgot it – there weren't any trees near him to fashion a replacement. 

Al smiled after him, a shimmer of tears in his eyes, while the white figure stood over him, mouth a flat line, and Ed closed his eyes as the Doors closed behind him. 

\-- June 1810--

"Ed," Mahdi said, his voice flat. 

Ed winced and squinted one eye open. Found himself lying on his back in the middle of his array, in the little shelter he'd made for himself during his first visit to the ruins. When he'd activated the array, the room had been blocked off and empty, a single candle casting just enough light to let him see what he was doing. Now, he was surrounded by Mahdi, Sanaz, and Banu, none of whom were smiling. 

Okay, so maybe it had been a bit...implied, that he was supposed to let one of them know _when_ he activated the array, but it had been late and everyone was tired from the trip and–

Ed was freaking _starved_ , he realised, and squeezed his eyes shut so he didn't have to look at the _very obvious veins around him_.

Someone sighed, and Banu said, **"You're impossible,"** right before the scent of blood filled the air, and Ed was sitting up and reaching for her before he realised it. 

He managed to check his momentum before he could snatch at her offered hand, half terrified he'd hurt her because of his desperation. But there was no way to keep himself from catching her wrist and lapping at the blood welling from her palm, and one of them would probably hit him if he tried, so he gave in to the inevitable. 

After he'd had enough from Banu and Sanaz to sate his hunger without endangering either of them, he found himself faced with Mahdi's disapproving stare, and hunched his shoulders a bit, looking down at the familiar lines of his array. **"Sorry,"** he mumbled. 

**"Next time,"** Mahdi said, his tone hard, **"you will let one of us know _before_ you wall yourself in, or I'll put a guard on you."**

Well, at least Mahdi wasn't telling him never to visit his brother again? Or kicking him out? (Even if he probably _should_. And Ed could admit, at least to himself, that a part of the reason he'd not told anyone, was to give them another chance to kick him out; he wondered if he'd ever be able to accept their forgiveness.) 

**"Yes, Mahdi,"** he agreed, still couldn't look up at the leader. 

Mahdi sighed and a hand ruffled Ed's short hair, probably turning it into a complete mess. **"Clean this up before someone starts studying it,"** he ordered, an edge to his voice that – Ed realised when he peeked up and found Mahdi staring at Banu, who was failing miserably at hiding her interest in the array – hadn't been aimed at him. 

Ed pulled out a stub of chalk from his pocket and sketched a quick array that would pull apart the elements of any surrounding chalk, effectively destroying any arrays drawn using it – one of Hohenheim's inventions – and activated it, then made a point of blowing at the resulting explosion of dust, so it didn't resettle in anything like the original array's shape. 

**"That,"** Banu said with a sort of resigned smile, **"isn't a bad trick."**

**"My next trick,"** Ed shot back as he grabbed his crutch so he could get up, **"is going to be figuring out a way to work it into the other array, so I can just activate it soon as I'm back."**

**"Is that possible?"** Banu asked. 

Ed snorted, while Mahdi shook his head. **"Impossible,"** Mahdi announced, because it was; Ed wouldn't be able to activate the human transmutation array without _also_ activating the one to destroy the chalk, and destroying the array would end the transmutation. (Which was a shame, because people kept finding him while he was in that other place, which meant they could see his array while he was otherwise distracted.) 

**"How is your brother?"** Sanaz asked a bit uncertainly. 

Ed shrugged. **"Really excited about getting an orange?"**

**"Oh."** Sanaz slumped a bit. 

Ed looked down, feeling oddly guilty. **"He laughed a bit,"** he offered quietly. **"Made some jokes at my expense, complained about me trying to fatten him up. Seemed happy."** Not that any of that meant anything, because pretending cheer when Ed was there was the sort of thing Al would do; was the sort of thing Ed had always done, to keep his brother from worrying quite so much while they were on the road together. Still tried to, a bit, though it was a lot harder to keep things from Al when he didn't know when he was watching. 

Pretending you weren't suffering so others didn't worry about you was something of an Elric habit, given Mum had done the same thing when she'd been sick. Had kept smiling even while she was bedridden and coughing up blood, as if she thought her smile would keep them from noticing she was dying. 

Ed put on his best smile, then, and started from the room. **"I'm going to head back to my tent, maybe sleep a bit. Sorry to drag everyone out of bed."**

**"Good night,"** they all offered a bit out of sync, and Ed smiled over his shoulder. 

Ed got back to his tent and waited in the darkness for about half an hour, before lighting one of his candles and pulling out the journal he was decoding. 

He couldn't stop remembering Al's flinch, and seeing his own stolen hand on his brother's shoulder; he had no interest in the nightmares awaiting him behind his eyelids. Not that night, not _ever_.

Not needing to sleep was the only part of his curse he was honestly grateful for. 

\--September-November 1810--

On their way back down from the camp up in the mountains, Mahdi and Sanaz decided they would swing far enough west to travel along the border of Amestris. 

**"We haven't done because of the language barrier,"** Banu reminded him when Ed made an uncertain face at the announcement. **"But you're fluent, and Behnam is nearly so, which means we have two people capable of communicating with them."**

**"Okay, sure,"** Ed agreed, because he got that. **"But won't that add time to the trip? And why even _bother_? We have plenty of supplies for the winter."**

**"Better to discover villages we can trade with when we don't need it, than to be struggling to find them when we're desperate,"** Banu replied, her expression almost chiding. **"The autumn pickings aren't always so plentiful as they have been these past couple years, and travelling while rationing is difficult."**

Ed knew something of that, because there had been weeks when he was on the road with Al, when they either couldn't afford or couldn't find food, especially in the winter months, so he'd had to ration what they had, or go hungry for so long as he could keep pretending he wasn't starving, because as soon as Al realised Ed hadn't been eating, he'd freak out, and Ed hated watching his brother go into a panic over him. 

How many mortal struggles had he forgotten, now they weren't a concern for him? How much more of his humanity would he lose before he found a way to end this curse? 

And would he ever even _be_ human again, after this? Or would he remain this monstrous half-thing with a taste for blood? The figure _had_ only promised Al would return as he had been. 

No, he _had_ to believe the figure would undo this. That he could return to being a proper human again once he'd done his part. Rediscover hunger and exhaustion with Al, want fruit and vegetables and rice, rather than blood. 

**"I suppose,"** Ed managed, hoped his internal fears weren't showing on his face. 

He seemed to pass muster, at least, because Banu didn't ask him if he was okay, and nor did anyone else, far too busy debating what Amestrisans would be like, as if they hadn't been living with one for nearly three years. (Ed didn't bother pointing that out to any of them, though he heard others – Azad, most often, the arse – loudly pointing that fact out when Ed was in range.) 

He spent a large part of the trip to the northeastern-most Amestrisan village with Mahdi, Sanaz, and Behnam, the two elders schooling him and Behnam on 'proper' trading conduct, or some nonsense. (Essentially, being polite, what sorts of things the tribe had to trade, things they wanted or needed, and to ask about any other potential trading opportunities along the route.) 

The first place they found was called Bergam, a village – _town_ , nearly – which seemed to be in a constant state of expanding, trying to make something of themselves. 

"We're, a lot of us, survivors from that horrible mess in Fisk," the farmer Ed and Behnam had found to introduce them to the leaders of the town said. He shot them an uncertain look, while Ed frowned and Behnam looked around at the stone buildings they were approaching with a healthy dose of curiosity; Amestrisan architecture was rather a different beast than Aerugonian or Drachman architecture, despite sharing borders. "Uh, not that you're likely to know anything about that, being desert folk and all." 

"I'm originally from Amestris," Ed corrected a bit absently. 

"Oh! I apologise. I just assumed– I mean–"

"Ed's father was a member of our tribe," Behnam explained, coming to the rescue because Ed was still trying to figure out why 'Fisk' was familiar to him. "He left and found love with an Amestrisan woman, and Ed has found us again with their deaths." 

"I– I'm sorry to hear that," the farmer said, sounding honestly regretful. "To lose your parents so young..." 

"Fisk!" Ed said as it came to him. "The Soapman Incident! My alchemy teacher was following the news, when we got any. Had friends up there – here – or something?" 

"Really? I can't think of any alchemist sorts back in Fisk, but I hardly knew everyone." 

Ed shrugged his right shoulder. "Oh, don't ask me the specifics; I always tuned him out, honestly. But, yeah. That was, what, ten years ago?" 

"About that," the farmer agreed, his smile approving, but something dark haunting his eyes. "There're some die-hards trying to recover, a bit, get the place back on its feet, but it'll never be the same. No good farming land out there, any more." 

"What...happened?" Behnam asked, looking uncertain. 

" _Idiots_ ," Ed muttered with feeling. 

"Don't mock us, boy," the farmer snapped, stopping and turning on Ed with a truly ferocious glare. 

Behnam got between them, slapping one hand over Ed's mouth and shooting him a glare, before turning to look at the farmer and apologetically offering, "I am sorry for Ed. He does not mean insult, but has a habit of speaking such anyway." 

Actually, Ed _did_ mean that insult, but he was reminded that Mahdi and Sanaz had told him to be _polite_ , so he put on his best contrite look and ducked his head like he was ashamed, just in case his contrite look was as terrible as he suspected it was. 

The farmer huffed and Ed saw his boots turn to continue leading the way into the small town. "Nasty storm pulled up a couple trees. There were human bodies under them, all turned to soap. The head priest declared it was a sign of the end-times, but the less religious sorts insisted it was just something that _happened_." The farmer scoffed. "Can you imagine?! Human beings turning into soap is _normal_ to their sort!" 

Ed didn't look up, but he suspected the farmer was making a motion toward him. Which, well, fair enough; the science behind the phenomenon made it unlikely, but absolutely plausible, under the right circumstances. Which Ed should...probably not point out. Polite. 

"The military sent out some big-name historian and he took a look, dated the bodies to be some hundred years old. Except there was a plague gone through the area back then, and word is he pointed that out, and then the kid who'd come with him sort of started coughing and collapsed, so..." The farmer sighed, sounding a little tired. Old. Like maybe the memories hurt so much more than anyone who hadn't been there could ever hope to understand. 

(Ed knew something of that pain.) 

"Military came in and put the whole area – everyone that'd gone within a mile of those bodies – under quarantine. Someone – rumour has it was the priest who was going on about end-times – started a riot, talked anyone who would listen into escaping, and the military killed everyone there. Burned everything and salted the earth after." 

"That is...horrible," Behnam said with feeling. And Ed was with him, even if he _did_ still think the whole thing was kinda dumb. Totally could have been avoided, if people wouldn't put so much stock in religious leaders. Or they'd just waited to see if they got sick; the kid who'd collapsed could have just picked something up in Central City! "My sympathies." 

The farmer sighed again. "Thanks, though it's old history, any more." 

"Just because something happened many years ago, does not make it any less deserving of sympathy than what is happening in the moment," Behnam insisted. 

Ed couldn't tell if that was partially aimed at him, or in reference to the child Behnam's wife, Ava, had miscarried a couple years before Ed joined the tribe. Not that it really mattered, and that was about when they reached the town's mayor, so he didn't bother asking, just let himself get swept away in the greetings and trade talk. 

He didn't really think about Fisk again, and neither he nor Behnam mentioned it when they got back to the rest of the tribe. 

\--November 1811--

A year later, when they stopped at Bergam again, one of the townspeople they'd traded with the year before called out to Ed and, once she had his attention, asked, "Where in Amestris did you say you were from?" 

Ed blinked at that and shrugged, because he'd never actually specified, mostly because the tiny village he was from wasn't a name most people knew, unless they lived nearby. "Down by East City," he offered, because that was one city name everyone in the country he'd ever met knew. 

"Oh," she said, shrugging and turning away. 

"Why?" Ed had to ask, because that sounded a little like he'd given the wrong answer. Or something. 

"Ah, just..." She offered him a helpless sort of smile. "Creta's making a mess of the south-west, completely destroyed some town called Wellesley?" 

Ed shrugged himself, unfamiliar with the name. "I've never been much further west than Central, honestly, but I...appreciate you letting me know?" 

She smiled like she understood his attempts at politeness. "Any time," she returned, and left him to catch up with Behnam, who was looking over some potential trades. 

And, again, Ed mostly forgot about Wellesley and the mess out west. 

\--June 1812-March 1814--

While they were in Xerxes again in June, Ed finally visited Al again to drop off the last of the books. He made a point of warning Mahdi and Sanaz he was heading off to do so, that time, so he had a sort of guard standing outside the remains of a house he set up in – Mahdi and Ed had agreed that it was probably best to keep everyone out; not to protect them from Ed, so much, as to avoid any temptation on their part to study his array – and he'd tried not to feel too self-conscious about that. 

He felt rather horrible that it had been two years since his last visit to Al, but his brother didn't seem to care, far more interested in the bags of goodies Ed had brought, and curling as close together as they could get while they went through everything. 

And Ed couldn't really say for sure, but it seemed like the figure had given them almost twice as much time as usual. 

Without any more reading material, Ed turned himself to actually picking up the other languages the tribe knew. Banu was happy to teach him Xingan, and Ziba – the tribe's unofficial academics teacher, and Banu's sister-in-law – was happy for him to sit in on her Aerugonian lessons. (She'd been trying to get him to attend general lessons pretty much since he'd joined the tribe, and while he'd attended a few to help him learn Xerxesian a bit faster, most of her lessons hadn't interested him. _Still_ didn't, really, but the Aerugonian lessons were too tempting to pass up, especially once he'd realised he recognised a few words from his childhood; a neighbour must have spoken it, but he couldn't say which one.) 

Finding a Drachman teacher was far harder, as only a few members of the tribe knew even the basic Drachman needed for trading, but Mahin eventually offered, and Ed was quick to accept, desperate for things to occupy himself with. 

Because, maybe, a part of him hoped, he'd find the answer to what he needed to do if he just stayed with the tribe long enough. Too, he knew, he didn't really _want_ to leave the tribe, even as it was looking more and more likely that he'd find no answers with them. But they'd accepted him, _all_ of him, and he didn't want to leave them. He didn't want to lose another family. 

And he _hated_ himself for feeling that way. Because every moment he spent not looking for his duty, was a moment Al spent trapped in that other world. And he knew his brother would never begrudge him this little bit of peace, not with his curse – not with the hell that awaited him as soon as he left the tribe, because having people, now, willing to donate blood for him, wouldn't help him when he was alone against the bandits on the road – but _still_. Knowing Al was suffering alone soured things. 

Eventually, Al would outweigh his own fear again, but Ed could _almost_ convince himself, for the moment, that he was better off staying with the tribe. Collecting what knowledge he could, in case it became necessary later. 

And then, one afternoon in 1814, while they were at the coast for the spring equinox, Azad caught Ed around the shoulders and flashed him a smile that would probably have looked about right on Ed if his teeth were lengthened. **"So,"** Azad said, his tone worryingly conversational – they didn't _do_ conversational, they did _insults_ – **"when are you intending to ask my sister to marry you?"**

Ed blinked a few times, thrown, and gave Azad a confused look. **"What?"**

Azad rolled his eyes up and silently mouthed a prayer for patience – or, well, Ed assumed that's what he was mouthing – then dropped his head forward to better give Ed a flat look. **"You've been spending an awful lot of time with Mahin lately, Ed,"** he pointed out, apparently deciding to take a different track. 

**"Because she's teaching me Drachman!"** Ed returned, starting to feel a bit annoyed; it was common knowledge in the tribe that he was studying other languages. **"Everyone knows that!"**

Azad raised both eyebrows at him. **"Everyone also knows that the only reason she offered, is because she's loved you for _years_."**

**"...the _hell_?"** was the only response Ed could find for that. 

Mahin...loved him? Despite his curse? _Why_? There was no way he – a blood-drinking, occasionally murderous amputee with a penchant for illegal alchemy – could be attractive. To... _anyone_. Let alone Mahin, who was hardly the most religious of the tribe, but had made it clear that she held religion to be more important than science. 

Well, okay, basic attractiveness was all just a biological process and utterly dependant on any one person's personal aesthetic taste in partners. In that, sure, if you ignore the missing arm and leg, he supposed he was...reasonably attractive. (He'd been told, before, that he had a nice face, at least. He'd buy that.) 

And he supposed it was a thing, especially for females, to enjoy helping someone with a physical impairment – Al had said something about that, once, to explain why women were more likely to offer them a free place to sleep for the night and a meal – and that might be related? Maybe? (Not that Ed understood in the least. Though, given, perhaps that was just because he wouldn't want to live with having to take care of himself; maybe he'd just done better at hiding the worst of his issues from her than he'd thought? He'd been assuming the whole tribe knew he was a complete mess who couldn't sleep for fear of the terrors haunting the darkness behind his eyelids, but maybe he'd been fooling everyone.) 

The curse, well... That _should_ have been off-putting, even without knowing the whole of it, but the belief that there would be a cure might negate that, a bit? Maybe? 

_Still_. All of that, everything... He'd have expected her to figure out, over the past few years, that he was so not husband material! 

Unless... Was Azad pulling his leg? It would be like him. 

Ed huffed and ducked out of Azad's hold. **"Using your sister to get a rise out of me is a new low,"** he remarked drily. 

Azad let out a laugh that sounded a little disbelieving. **"You can't be that blind, please."**

**"Not falling for it!"** Ed insisted, because experience said Azad would keep on for a while if he thought he might, _eventually_ , be able to convince Ed of something. 

Except Azad didn't keep on pushing, and he didn't laugh it off, either. He just turned and walked back the way Ed assumed he'd come from. 

Ed blinked after him for a moment, then shrugged and continued toward where Banu and Minoo were giving history lessons disguised as folk tales to the children of the fishing village they set up near. He knew the history behind the stories, certainly, as much time as he'd spent with the two tribe historians over the last five years, but listening to the two women weave their tales was always interesting, as much as he'd hated folk tales as a child. (Perhaps it was simply that he'd hated _Amestrisan_ folk tales? It was easier to believe that, than believe Banu and Minoo were better storytellers than Mum had been.) 

He wasn't there for long, before Mahin stopped next to him, her face awash in red. Embarrassed, it looked like, rather than angry or upset. Which didn't help Ed much, honestly, beyond telling him he needed to _not_ open by asking who he should threaten on her behalf. (He'd suspect Azad, but she was generally more than capable of handling her moronic brother.) 

**"Could we...talk?"** she asked quietly, not quite looking at him, but clearly talking to him. 

**"Of course,"** Ed was quick to agree, and he grabbed his crutch to lever himself to his feet, completely unsurprised when she automatically moved to help him. (Though, honestly, her idea of 'helping' had only ever got in his way. He just didn't really have the heart to snap at her to stop, because Al'd often tried to help in the same way, and it was nice to have that little bit of familiarity.) 

As he turned to follow her away from Banu and Minoo's audience, he noticed Banu watching them, a small, pleased smile twisting her mouth. Like she maybe knew exactly what Mahin wanted? 

Ed's stomach felt like it was sinking, a bit, as his mind jumped to the conclusion that, maybe Azad hadn't been messing with him. For once. 

They didn't go far, just out of easy hearing range of the story time and the nearest tents. Mahin turned toward him as she stopped, staring at his shirt, instead of his face, her own face still a brilliant shade of red. **"Azad told me that–"** She coughed and shifted a bit, her eyes sliding toward the sleeve hiding the remains of his right shoulder. **"He told me you haven't asked about marriage because you didn't...realise. That I'm in love with you."**

And then she looked up, meeting his eyes, the now-familiar gold shade of her eyes lit bright with sunlight and some emotion that Ed couldn't really...understand. 

He tightened his hand around his crutch and struggled to swallow down the block in his throat. **"That is–"** he started, before realising he didn't really know what to say. How were you supposed to react to a friend telling you they loved you? Like, marriage-love, not family-love, which was what Ed felt. Or, well, that's what he _thought_ he felt. They were friends. She was sort of like his sister, really. Not like Al was his brother, but...similar. **"I...don't know what to say?"** he tried after a moment of struggling to find something more coherent, because his experience with women – especially those in the tribe – said they appreciated it far more when he admitted he was struggling with something, rather than trying to brush it off with a grin, like he'd have done with any of the men. 

She slumped. **"You don't feel the same,"** she said quietly. Defeated. 

Ed felt...bad. Horrible. Like he'd just pissed all over her favourite blanket, or something. (Not that he'd ever do that to _her_ , but he may have done something similar to her brother. Once. As payback.) 

What was he supposed to say? 

She nodded, once, then turned and walked quickly away. 

Ed just sort of stared after her, feeling so very lost. And maybe a little like someone had just landed a hit to his solar plexus, which was just... _messed up_. What right did he even have to feel that way? 

**"That didn't look like it went so well,"** Banu commented quietly. 

Ed twisted and found her standing just to his side, looking sympathetic. Minoo was still telling stories to her audience, likely doing her best to keep the children distracted from Ed and Mahin's little drama. Which–

**"Why didn't anyone _tell_ me?"** he heard himself asking, then winced, because that was sort of a jerky question. 

**"We assumed you knew,"** Banu replied evenly. 

Ed shot her a look that, he hoped, conveyed a rather disgusted, 'Have you _met_ me?!' so he didn't have to say it out loud. 

She winced. **"A mistake on many parts, yes,"** she allowed, before sighing and asking, **"Did you tell her no?"**

**"I–"** Ed cut himself off, wasn't really certain what to say, and barely managed to stop himself from throwing his arm up in the air and dropping his crutch. **"She's like a _sister_ , Banu! And how can I _possibly_ think about– about, I don't know, _marriage_?! I mean, _look at me_!"** He waved his hand at himself, then cursed as he lost hold of his crutch and it dropped to the sand with a muted thump. 

Banu stepped forward as she ducked down, grabbing his crutch before he could start the occasionally unsteady process of leaning down to get it himself. **"You're brilliant and handsome,"** she offered quietly, as she handed back his crutch, and he couldn't meet her eyes, torn between embarrassment and disbelief. **"Of course Mahin would fall for you, no matter what curses you might be under. Edward–"** he couldn't stop from looking up at that, and her gaze was kind, but firm, when he met it **"–she loves you, has for years, now. That's not going to change. If you really consider her a sister, you need to give her a definitive answer, even if it's a no; running away isn't fair to either of you.**

**"And,"** she continued, something that sounded a little like grief shading her voice, **"if it's your curse that's holding you back, perhaps it's time to leave and find the cure; it's becoming clear you won't find anything here."**

Ed swallowed against a lump, hating the way his eyes were burning. He looked away from her, toward the ground, so she wouldn't see how much it hurt to think of leaving them at last. Because he needed to – for Al – but he was just selfish enough to want to stay forever. 

Would it really be so bad to marry Mahin? Start a family? Be happy for a little bit longer? 

But what about his curse? What about _Al_? What would happen if he was no longer the last of Hohenheim's line? Would the figure consider his duty fulfilled because he'd had children? Having kids _couldn't_ be it, no way that was something Hohenheim had left undone. So, if he fulfilled his mysterious duty by no longer being the last of his line, what did that mean for his deal with the figure? Would he get Al back? Or would his brother be trapped there forever? 

He couldn't chance it. He couldn't chance _Al_.

**"Yeah,"** he whispered, and the word came out thick, weighted with all the loneliness living with the tribe had kept at bay. 

Arms caught his shoulders, pulled him into Banu's embrace, and he dropped his crutch again so he could hug her back as best he could with only one arm. **"At least wait until after the equinox to leave,"** she whispered. 

He wasn't really certain that would make it any easier, but it would, at least, give him the chance to say good-bye to everyone. Keep people from thinking he was finally just running away. Or was spirted away by a daeva or whatever weird religious insanity they came up with. **"Okay."**

Her smile, when she pulled back, looked like it hurt, and he tried one of his own, just so she wasn't the only one trying to pretend their chest felt way too tight. **"Don't leave Mahin to wallow,"** she suggested, ducking down to get his crutch for him again. **"Go talk to her first. _Before_ you talk to Maman and Baba."**

His smile became too hard to keep up, so he let it drop as he accepted his crutch back; he didn't want to have to tell Sanaz and Mahdi he was leaving. He didn't want to tell _anyone_ , really; why would he? **"I'm going,"** he muttered, and made his hobbling way around her – she didn't try to stop him – and turned toward the tent he knew was Mahin's. 

Azad was in there with his sister when Ed poked his head in, after getting the okay to enter, and he was glaring for all he was worth. Mahin, for her part, just looked...heartbroken. She wasn't even _trying_ to hide that she'd been crying, and a part of Ed wanted to turn around and run. 

But he was twenty-four years old, and he'd done this to her; he was going to bloody well man up and fix things. (Or, well, he was going to do his best.) 

**"Could I speak to you, Mahin?"** he asked in as kind a tone as he could manage when Azad was attempting to drill a hole through to his brain with his eyes. 

**"Yes,"** she whispered, only just loud enough for him to hear. 

**"I'm not leaving,"** Azad snapped, clearly guessing Ed's next question. 

When Mahin didn't tell him to leave, Ed swallowed and stepped into the tent all the way, doing his best to keep Azad at crutch's length, so he'd have the upper hand if the jerk decided to punch him, or whatever. He took a careful breath, trying to organise his thoughts, and then just gave it up as a bad job when that didn't help, and said, **"Mahin, I do– I care for you, truly, but not like– Like a sister. Which isn't, I know, what you meant, or want, or– But I–"** He grimaced and pressed his fingers tight against the worn marks years of use had rubbed into the wood. **"If I wasn't...what I am. _How_ I am, I would...I don't know. We could...try. Maybe. But I'm– I have to...fix this, fix _me_ , before I can do...anything else.**

**"I should have left two years ago,"** he admitted, couldn't look at either of them, **"when it became clear my cure wasn't...here, but I didn't. I didn't want to leave. Still don't. And that's..."** He huffed out a laugh that felt like it tore bloody strips on its way out; he half expected his unnatural hunger to hit him. **"Once the tribe heads north, I'm leaving. Back to Amestris; if I'm going to find a cure, it'll probably be there. And, once I've found it, once I'm...fixed, again, I'll come back. I promise."**

**"Then I'll wait for you,"** Mahin said, and Azad made a discontent noise. 

Ed jerked his head up and met her eyes, so much happier than when he'd first stepped in. But her words had shot straight through him, leaving him hollow and aching, and he shook his head. **"No,"** he said, didn't care if it came out too harshly. **"Don't wait for me; I'm not worth it."**

**"Of _course_ you're–"**

**"And besides,"** Ed interrupted, forcing himself to speak one of the little truths of his past that he'd been keeping back, **"that's what my mum did, waiting for Hohenheim. And she got sick and died. And then he died, too. So don't. Don't wait, not for me, not for _anyone_. Just keep living. And if you– If you're not...married, when I get back, then we'll see. Try. But don't hold back just because of me. Okay? You deserve to be happy, not... I don't know. Miserable. _Lonely_."** That was _his_ burden to bear. 

She'd started crying again while he spoke, and he had to look away, toward the floor of her tent. **"That's...all I came to say. That's it. So I'm going to–"**

A body – Mahin's – slammed into him, and they'd both have toppled to the floor, except Azad was right behind her, catching the remains of Ed's right shoulder and bracing him while he got his feet back under himself. 

Before he could decide if he should drop his crutch to hug her back, Mahin stepped back, rubbing roughly at her eyes. **"Okay,"** she said, and she sounded a little like she was crying still, but, when she looked up at him, it was clear she was managing to hold the tears back. **"Then, when you get back, I'll be here. Not waiting, just...here. Deal?"**

**"Deal,"** Ed agreed, and his smile felt like a stab straight through to his heart, but he forced it to remain in place as he nodded to her and Azad, then ducked back out of her tent. 

He let it die away as he turned to Mahdi and Sanaz's tent. He wasn't looking forward to this – to _any_ of the good-byes he was about to find himself facing down – but they deserved the chance to say them, this tribe. His family. 

And he'd be back. As soon as he could. That should help, right? 

(It didn't.) 

-0-

A week later, as the Xerxesian tribe started their slow trundle north, along the Xingan border, Ed turned the horse he'd been forced to take – he was informed that, immortal or no, the desert was cruel, and he was either going to take a horse to make the trip easier, or one of them were going with him; he picked the horse – and started north back along the path they'd taken two weeks before. Edging his way along the Aerugonian border, passing through the rocky sands of Ishval, and finally making his way across the green fields and bountiful forests of his childhood. 

Until, at last, he stopped at the burned-out husk that he'd once called home. He didn't expect to find anything there, but he had to start somewhere, and that was as good a place as any. 

And, well, it turned out he was still human enough to hope for the best.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's the end of this part of the series! The final side-story, _Break Me ~ Al & Truth_, is a piece from Al's PoV, so feel free to go read that, and arantxamagnelli's two pieces are up, which you can find the links to in the first and second chapters, or just check [the masterpost on tumblr](http://batshieroglyphics.tumblr.com/post/152808175034).
> 
> RE: The sequel:  
> The sequel will be titled _Body's Struggle_ , and will be Ed/Greed, with some probable background Ed/others. It'll cover a much longer stretch of time than this one did, as the third in the series is intended to start around the time of Ishval. XD No idea when, exactly, it'll get written, but it absolutely won't happen until next year, as I've already promised to prioritise the second part of _Our Sinner's Redemption_. Not sorry. XP

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Wearing All Vintage Misery](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14841143) by [Emamel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emamel/pseuds/Emamel)




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